Takashimadaira Danchi about 60 years ago and today

History of Takashimadaira Danchi

The place name Takashimadaira comes not from the shape of the land but from a person's name. At the end of the Edo period, this open field along the Arakawa River was called Tokumarugahara, and in 1841 the gunnery expert Takashima Shuhan held a drill of Western-style gunnery here. The field's name disappeared from maps and became Takashimadaira because his name was borrowed. The field's name was replaced by a person's name. If you send the aerial photographs back to the oldest era, however, the land before the name changed appears as it was.

A field that was all paddies

In the photograph from around 1936-42, the Arakawa River crosses the top edge of the frame, and just south of it a wide levee meanders east and west. Inside the levee, it is paddies from end to end. Long, narrow strip-shaped lots line up facing the same way, and because the brightness differs from lot to lot, the whole frame looks like a fine checkerboard. The paddy lots fill the frame. White ridge paths between the paddies run in every direction, and the houses keep to the southern edge. In the lower part of the frame, hamlets wrapped in woods form a band from east to west, and south of them lots of fields continue. A building with a large white roof and wide grounds stands only at the bend of the river in the northeast, apart from the world of paddies.

The elevation readings also match this landform. The measuring point at the center is 3.4 m, the north is 3.5 m and the west 3.7 m, hardly different, and it rises slightly in the south to 4.4 m and in the east to 4.3 m. The difference among the five values is only about 1 m. The whole town sits on a low, flat surface made by the river.

The 1945-50 photograph is fine-grained, and even the shape of each paddy can be read. A narrow channel meanders along the south side of the levee, and the grid of paddies takes its water from that channel. Toward the right of the center there is just one cluster of lots facing a different direction from their surroundings, and from there a thin stream winds away to the south. At the right edge, the rim of a town packed densely with buildings enters the frame, and hamlets also spread in the bottom corner. Everything else is paddies, and no grid of streets has been drawn anywhere.

A plan drawn on the paddies

In the 1961-69 photograph too, everything from the left half of the frame to the center is still paddies. In the north and east, however, change has begun. On the long, narrow strip between the levee and the channel, buildings with white roofs and long, narrow warehouses line up without gaps, and inside the bend of the river long, narrow lots stand in rows. The town in the east has spread outward from 1945-50, and dense rows of houses fill the right edge of the frame from top to bottom. In the paddies too, just two buildings with large white roofs stand isolated, and a new straight road crosses beside them. A little above the center, bright lots divided into squares gather and cut off the row of paddies. If you look closely, there are two kinds of road. One kind is the old roads that curve diagonally to link hamlet with hamlet, and the other is the new roads drawn straight, ignoring the paddy lots. There are still only a few of the latter, and they disappear into the paddies partway.

The plan of the town was drawn on these paddies in the time before the photographs advance by one era. In 1968 the subway was extended north and a station was built in this area, and in 1972 residents began moving into the Takashimadaira Danchi (housing complex). The tracks had arrived first. A wide, flat surface on which lots could be laid out all at once remained in one piece within reach of central Tokyo by subway. That is why this field was chosen.

Rows of slab-shaped buildings

The 1974-78 photograph does not look like the same frame. The grid of paddies has vanished cleanly, and from the left to the right of the center, long, narrow slab-shaped buildings line up in many rows facing the same way. The buildings stand at equal intervals, and sports grounds and squares are tucked into the breaks between rows. Toward the bottom on the left there are two sports grounds with oval tracks, with a building with a white roof beside them. Two bands run diagonally through the blocks from northeast to southwest; one is a wide road and the other is tracks running at a high level. The surface that was paddies became blocks as it was. The band of factories in the north has grown thicker still, and three round white tanks line up. The southern third sinks into a reddish-brown tone, but this is a part pieced in from a different photograph on the south side only, and that side is the old rows of houses on top of the terrace.

The 1979-83 photograph was taken in the leafless season, and the rows of buildings make dark stripes on the brown ground. The framework of the rows is the same as in 1974-78, and the change is in the open land between the buildings. Large roofs that look like schools and buildings with white roofs come in one after another, and east of the danchi, houses pack in finely. The two diagonal bands are even clearer, and the tracks at a high level cast a line of thin shadows on the ground. At the bend of the river in the north, water surfaces remain blue between the long, narrow lots.

The flat land where the framework remains

If you look at the 1984-86 and 1987-90 photographs in a row, the outlines of the blocks no longer move. The rows of buildings and the sports grounds stay as they were, and the change is in the color of the roofs and the small buildings outside the danchi. In the band of factories in the north, the roofs change to blue metal, lawn and round clumps of trees are laid out on the riverside land, and a straight road runs on top of the levee. In 1987-90 a building with a large white roof appears at the upper left. The tracks at a high level running out through the lower right corner are already in the 1979-83 photograph, and they have not moved there.

In the latest aerial photograph, the trees between the buildings have grown and the green is dense. The roofs have been repainted and are bright, and only the arrangement of the buildings keeps the layout of half a century ago. The framework of the buildings has not moved. The long, narrow roof of the elevated station crosses the middle of the blocks, and from there diagonal roads pass through the rows of residential buildings. West of the danchi, a sports ground has turned the color of lawn, and a building with a large gray roof stands next to it. All three tanks in the north remain in the same positions, and to their west there is a lot lined with black panels. The long, narrow water surfaces at the bend of the river have been filled with buildings. The riverside land north of the levee has become a bright green open space, with round clumps of trees and square sports grounds side by side. In the photograph from around 1936-42, the same place was bare ground outside the levee, and the water of the Arakawa River flowed through it. The south and east of the frame are filled entirely with roofs, and the green remains only in scattered spots like small islands.

Official land price (Chika Koji) records remain from 1983 on. The point is a residential area of Takashimadaira 1-chome, about 860 m from the location. It started at 295,000 yen per square meter, rose to 857,000 yen in 1988, and is 436,000 yen in the 2026 publication. In the record up to the 2026 publication, the lowest is 1983, the start, and the highest is 1988. The path of nearly tripling and then falling back to about half remains as the value of land on which the paddies were laid out again. The ground itself is a low, flat surface made by the Arakawa River, and the elevation readings show this too. Because the land is so low, the assumptions for water cannot be left out, but you cannot tell from the photographs where and how deep the water is assumed to be. If you look up an address on the official hazard map of Itabashi Ward, you reach the assumptions for each neighborhood.