Takasaki Station East Exit about 60 years ago and today

History of Takasaki Station East Exit

If you follow the east side of Takasaki Station in the aerial photographs, an oval ring keeps appearing about 1 km from the station. It is the track of Takasaki Racecourse. From the black-and-white 1961-69 photograph to 1984-86, the ring stays in the same place with almost no change in shape or size, and only the fields and paddies around it are replaced by rows of houses. Where the ring was, a building with a large white roof sits in today's photograph. The change east of the station can be read in two things: this ring, and a single band of elevated track that appears along the station grounds.

The oval ring and the fields

At Takasaki Station, three conventional lines, the Takasaki Line, the Joetsu Line, and the Shin-etsu Line, gather, and the Joshin Electric Railway line is added to them. The Joetsu Line, which runs through to Niigata, opened along its whole length in 1931, and the tracks leaving the station split in several directions to the north and south. The area east of the station is flat land without relief, land where both station grounds lined with many tracks and an oval track can be laid without bending them to fit the terrain.

A bundle of tracks runs north and south through the frame a little left of the center. This is the look of the black-and-white 1961-69 photograph. The station grounds are long from north to south, and heading south the lines split and spread like a fan toward the lower right of the frame. Rows of houses already sit close to the east of the station grounds, but in the right half beyond the oval ring, square lots of fields and paddies line up in order. The inside of the ring is a flat gray surface, and only the track on the outside is edged thin and white. Just southeast of the station grounds, one large facility gathers with white roofs lined up in a grid. The river running diagonally down the left of the frame has a wide white riverbed, and at the upper left there is a lot enclosed in a square by lines like a moat.

The inside of the oval ring turns green in 1974-78, and two round shapes can be seen side by side there. In the photograph of this era, only the left third of the frame appears in a separate, brighter tone. Houses have begun to fill the area around the ring, and the fields and paddies have been pushed to the right edge and upper right of the frame. Southeast of the station grounds, the fan of tracks has spread further, continuing to the lower right edge as a band of many lines in parallel. The facility with white grid roofs keeps the same shape in the same place as in the previous era, and inside the square lot at the upper left a large building and an open ground like a schoolyard can be seen together. Along the station grounds on the north side of the station as well, buildings with long, narrow roofs line up parallel to the tracks.

The elevated band along the station grounds

In 1979-83, on the east side of the station grounds, a thick, straight white band runs north and south. It is wider than any road around it, comes down from the top edge of the frame along the station grounds, and in the south runs out the bottom of the frame alongside the tracks. According to the chronology of the City of Takasaki, the Joetsu Shinkansen opened from Omiya Station to Niigata Station in 1982, and in the same year the terminal building of Takasaki Station and the east exit plaza were completed. The catalog of photographs published by the Takasaki City Library also lists the construction of the Shinkansen viaduct photographed at the east exit of the station in 1977 and 1979. The white band of this era appears to be the elevated structure before it was finished. In the same photograph, a fragment of a white band extending east and west also appears in the lower part of the frame. Its position overlaps the line that is finished in the next era as an elevated road crossing the river. From the inside of the oval ring, the round shapes of the previous era have disappeared, and it has returned to a flat surface.

In the 1984-86 photograph, the same band has settled into the same dark color as its surroundings, marking off the east edge of the station grounds as a single line. In the lower part of the frame an elevated road extending east and west comes into view and crosses the river at the lower left. The river holds brown water widely, and a round sports ground appears on its bank. The oval ring is still in the same place, and the green inside it is flat like lawn. The fields and paddies that remained east of the ring are also losing their unbroken extent as houses enter between the lots.

The station became the junction of two Shinkansen lines in 1997. In that year the Shinkansen to Nagano opened, and in fiscal 2014 that line was extended as far as Kanazawa Station as the Hokuriku Shinkansen. Takasaki became a station served by two Shinkansen lines, the Joetsu and the Hokuriku, and the role of a junction that it had played with conventional lines it came to play with the Shinkansen as well.

The white roof after the ring

The racecourse was closed in fiscal 2004. The site, however, did not become vacant right away. As a provisional use until its purpose was decided, city-owned and privately owned land was leased in addition to the prefecture-owned land and existing buildings, and an off-track sales office for betting tickets on both central and local horse racing was placed there. The basic policy of Gunma Prefecture positioned the site as a large space left in the town, about 1 km from the east exit of Takasaki Station and about 10.8 hectares, and concluded that placing a combined convention facility used for exhibitions and international conferences was the best choice. Construction began in November 2017, and a four-story conference and exhibition facility and a multistory parking garage were built. Its name is G Messe Gunma. Its opening, planned for spring 2020, was put off repeatedly because of the epidemic.

If you look at the place of the oval in today's photograph, a white, flat large roof covers most of the eastern part of the ring, and gray roofs continue beside it. Only the western end of the ring remains as a rounded green surface, and the curve of the track has become its edge as it was. The facility with white grid roofs that was southeast of the station grounds is in the same place through every era, and in today's photograph too the row of roofs can be read. The elevated band runs north and south through the east edge of the station grounds, along the same position as the white band of 1979-83. Southeast of the station grounds, the fan of tracks that spread in 1974-78 still lines up in many parallel lines, extending to the lower right edge of the frame. The square lot enclosed by a moat at the upper left also remains in the same position, keeping its green edging.

In the right half of the frame, fields and paddies can no longer be seen. East of the ring, where square lots lined up in 1961-69, roads run as if tracing the direction of the lots, and house roofs fill the space between them. The river on the left has wide green riverside land on both banks, with sports grounds and baseball fields lined up in it. In Makoto-cho, about 585 m from the station, the land prices of residential land have exceeded those of the previous year in every recorded year. The lowest value is 130,000 yen in 2017 and the highest is 177,000 yen in 2026, both in the record up to the 2026 publication of the official land prices (Chika Koji). The flooding assumptions for the lots near the riverside land are shown on the official hazard map of the City of Takasaki.