Takesato Danchi about 60 years ago and today

History of Takesato Danchi

If you switch to the 1974-78 aerial photograph, rows that look like bars of the same length laid diagonally side by side appear all at once from the lower left of the frame to the center. They are the residential buildings of the Takesato Danchi (public housing complex) in the City of Kasukabe, Saitama Prefecture. In the same frame one era earlier, 1961-69, there is not a single bar. Paddies cut into strips continue from corner to corner, and hamlets covered with homestead woods sit only here and there along the roads and the river. This location, where six past eras are available, is a place that seems to catch the moment paddies were replaced by blocks from both before and after.

A plan drawn on the paddies

The site of the danchi sits on low, flat alluvial land near the bottom of the Kanto Plain. The elevation readings are 5.2 m at the center toward the danchi and 4.1 m in the south, the lowest, and the other three directions also stay between 4.8 and 5.3 m. It is land where the height moves only a little over 1 m within less than 1 km, and the only thing the landform decides is where the water goes. The 1961-69 photograph shows how that water was used. Strip-shaped paddies, with lots facing slightly different directions from place to place, cover the ground densely, and narrow channels and dirt roads thread through the gaps. The place name Takesato goes back to the name of a village that was in this area before the city was born.

The river running diagonally from the upper right of the frame to the right edge bore the role of collecting the water of this lowland. In the 1961-69 photograph, thin rows of trees continue along both banks, and long, narrow hamlets cling to the inside of them. The paddy strips seem to have been cut to fit the direction of this river and the channels, and the way the tilt of the lots changes from place to place shows that the waterways came first. The houses of the hamlets, surrounded by homestead woods, appear like black masses, and thin white roads curve between them to connect them. Seen from above, almost nothing other than the ridges between paddies can be called straight.

Unbroken flat land continued widely, and a railway also ran through it. It was land that met the conditions the Japan Housing Corporation was looking for in the suburbs in the 1960s. Because the paddies became blocks as they were, the traces of land work cutting into hills appear nowhere in the photographs. Neither steps nor retaining walls were needed, and the grid of the plan could be laid straight on the ground; this gives the arrangement of the buildings its too-orderly impression.

Rows of buildings beginning to line up

In 1966 residents began moving in. In the photograph of the next era, 1974-78, the residential buildings line up in groups of several rows, all facing the same direction turned slightly from north-south. The ground between the buildings shows white, with almost no tree shadows falling on it. It is clearly a town just planted. On the east and south edges of the danchi, the paddy strips still press right up to just outside the site. The upper half of the frame is still the existing hamlets and fields, and the way the lines of houses run along winding roads is drawn by a logic entirely different from the straight lines of the danchi. In this era the difference in color is large between the pieced-together sections of the frame, and places burned yellow and places tinged gray can be seen side by side. At the lower right of the frame, separate from the danchi, a section has appeared where smaller houses line up regularly facing the same way. It suggests that the large blocks acted as a lure and that house building on cut lots had begun around them too. Toward the bottom of the center, one building with a strongly reddish roof catches the eye.

In 1979-83, the whole frame takes on an even greenish tone. The trees planted between the buildings have grown, and dark green streaks have begun to enter between the rows. The outline of the danchi does not stand out as strongly as in the previous era, and the boundary with the outside loosens. On the north side, smaller houses increase around the outer edge of the existing hamlets, and the paddies on the east side also change into housing lots piece by piece. Inside the site, a building with a roof a size larger than the residential buildings and an open square beside it can now be read. It is clear that another facility supporting daily life has been added to a site that had only rows of buildings, but its use cannot be confirmed from this grain.

In 1984-86 the ground appears uniformly brown. It seems to have been taken in winter, when plants had withered, and the roofs are washed out white, so the outline of each residential building can be read like a line. If you count the number of buildings and how the rows are grouped, this photograph is the easiest to read among the five eras up to 1987-90. Even so, in the right half of the frame, farmland lots still remain widely in one piece, which shows that not everything outside the danchi has become town.

In 1987-90, the road running east and west south of the danchi stands out thick, and buildings with large roofs begin to line up along it. In the town on the north side, the gaps between houses fill in, and the black masses of homestead woods visibly decrease. Only the water surface of the river flowing diagonally across the upper right of the frame remains, as the brightest band, in the same position as in the first era.

The framework half a century later

If you follow the rows of buildings in today's aerial photograph, their positions and directions have hardly changed from the 1970s photograph. The direction of the buildings has not moved. The amount of greenery differs greatly. The groves between the buildings have grown, and seen from above, the residential buildings appear half buried in woods. In the middle of the danchi there is a building with a large roof and a square water surface that looks light blue. In the lower left corner of the frame, a sports ground with an oval track remains in the colors of lawn and soil. Along the road passing east of the danchi, buildings with roofs a size larger, even seen from above, line up. The surroundings keep only a little farmland at the left and right edges, and the paddies have been pushed out of the photograph. More than half a century after residents moved in, only the framework of the arrangement of buildings has remained.

As a large danchi that opened as a town in the same era, Tokiwadaira in the City of Matsudo, Chiba Prefecture, welcomed residents a step earlier. A town made by leveling wild land on a plateau and a town made by filling in and leveling paddies leave entirely different kinds of traces in the photographs.

An observation point for land prices is in a residential area of Bingo-higashi, about 400 m from the blocks of the danchi. The record runs from 1998, and that year's 172,000 yen per square meter is the highest value in the series up to the 2026 publication of the official land prices (Chika Koji), while 99,200 yen from 2021 to 2023 is the lowest value. In the 2026 publication it is 101,000 yen, about 60% of the first year, 1998. Since this is low, flat land at an elevation of about 5 m with a river nearby, for the assumptions for water, the sure way is to check the hazard map published by the City of Kasukabe at the level of the lot number.