Tokiwadaira Danchi about 60 years ago and today

History of Tokiwadaira Danchi

A band that bends in a gentle bow lies in the lower half of the frame. White strips of the same length overlap in many layers facing the same way, and a road in a large arc embraces them from outside. This is Tokiwadaira Danchi, a danchi (public housing complex), in the City of Matsudo, Chiba Prefecture. In the 1961-69 photograph, the oldest one this location can go back to, the arc already appears in its finished form. This is a location that begins with the newly opened town, and the wild land before land preparation belongs to a time the photographs do not reach.

Wild land after the pastures

The danchi sits on top of the Shimosa Plateau. The surface of the plateau has almost no relief, and the measured elevations fall within a range from 28.3 m in the north to 23.2 m in the south. The center is 26.8 m, the east 26.8 m, and the west 27.8 m, so even if you walk from one end of the danchi to the other, the difference in height is only a few meters. Still, the land slopes down slightly toward the south, and beyond that it connects to the yatsu valleys that cut into the plateau.

The place name Tokiwadaira was newly given to match the land preparation of the danchi. Until then this whole area was called Kanegasaku. The place name was born together with the danchi. In the Edo period, wide pastures where the shogunate let horses loose were set on the Shimosa Plateau, and after the start of the Meiji era that wild land was cleared for farming in turn. Place names such as Goko (go means five), where the next station is, and Mutsumi beyond it are remnants of names that counted the order of clearing. Because it remained into modern times as wild land that never fully became paddies or a town area, flat land of a sizable extent lay untouched and empty on this plateau.

Then the railway came through. It is the Shin-Keisei Line, which crosses the plateau from east to west. At a distance in the 20 km range from central Tokyo, there was land that was flat and wide and had a station as well. For the Japan Housing Corporation, which at the end of the 1950s was looking for suitable land for large-scale housing danchi, conditions could not have lined up more clearly. Residents began moving in in 1960, and the name of the station was also changed from the name of the settlement before development to Tokiwadaira.

Rows of buildings drawing an arc

In the black-and-white 1961-69 photograph, the residential buildings line up in a gentle arc from the lower center of the frame to the lower right. The buildings are grouped a few rows at a time, and each group is turned a little in direction. Not forcing them into a straight grid even though the ground has no steps was an intention on the designers' side. The road running around the outside also curves along the same arc, showing the outline of the danchi with a single line. Between the buildings the ground shows white, and almost no tree shadows fall on it. In the middle of the site, vacant land that is still bare earth remains in a block.

Outside that arc is still a farming village on the plateau. The northern half and the left half of the frame are covered with field lots and woods, and settlements wrapped in homestead woods sit dotted along the roads. In the middle left, a band of branching woods appears black. It is the trace of a yatsu valley cutting into the plateau, the form of trees left on slopes that did not become fields. At the upper right a straight white road passes north-south, and on the northern edge of the danchi a long straight line running east-west and buildings lined up along it can be seen.

By 1974-78, the upper half of the frame is almost filled with detached houses. The arc of the danchi can still be read clearly, but the boundary with the outside is not as sharp as in the previous era. In this era the color differs greatly between the sections of the joined frame: the upper third appears brown, and from the middle down it appears a greenish yellow. The color boundaries are not the edges of the site but the seams where the photographs were joined. The vacant land in the middle of the site still remains as a brown lot, the woods of the yatsu valley on the left are also intact, and a thin white line runs diagonally beside them.

Until the valley was filled

In 1979-83 the grain becomes finer, and the residential buildings can be counted one by one as white strips. In the middle and toward the south of the site, several plazas of brown ground can be read. It is clear that outdoor spaces were fixed in a site that had only rows of buildings, but you cannot tell from this grain what the plazas are for. Outside the danchi the town fills up further, and in the upper half of the frame there is almost no gap between roofs. At the left edge, bright orange bare ground appears. It is a surface where land preparation has begun.

In 1984-86 the whole frame appears in a dark, subdued green. It seems to have been taken in the season of full leaves, and the trees grown between the buildings become stripes of dark shadow, alternating with the white of the residential buildings. The shape of the arc itself does not change. In the yatsu valley on the left a band of deep green still continues, and on its western edge fields divided in steps can be seen. Even when the top of the plateau filled with housing, the slopes of the valley remained to the end as farmland and woods.

In 1987-90, that remainder moves. From the middle left downward, bright brown bare ground spreads along the valley, with straight edges that look like construction surfaces. The woods of the yatsu valley are cut away. A thin white structure running lengthwise through the valley also appears, but you cannot tell at this resolution whether it is a road or something else. On the northern edge of the danchi, a building with a larger roof and a roof shining blue are added. This is the era when the area around the station began to gain depth as a place of commerce.

The arc sixty years later

In today's aerial photograph, the position of the arc and the direction of the buildings match the first photograph. The framework of the arc remains as it was. The change is in the amount of green: seen from above, the groves grown between the buildings half wrap the residential buildings. A brown plaza remains in the middle of the site, and a building with a larger roof stands near it. The surroundings are town area without gaps, and neither the field lots nor the black masses of homestead woods that covered the frame in 1961-69 can be found.

The biggest change is in the middle left. The valley that was bare ground and construction surfaces in 1987-90 has become a wide green space holding a pond. It is the result of the cut valley being returned to green in another form, neither farmland nor housing land. Even if it is all lumped together as the top of the plateau, the way the ground was formed differs on surfaces where a valley was filled and at the edges of land preparation. The hazard map published by the City of Matsudo carries the assumptions by town district and lot number, so it is best to leave detailed judgments to it.

Takesato Danchi in the City of Kasukabe, Saitama Prefecture, is among the large danchi that the Japan Housing Corporation built in the same 1960s. Because that one begins from paddies everywhere, not a single residential building appears in the photograph of the oldest era. This is the difference between a location whose prehistory remains inside the frame of the photographs and a location whose prehistory has left the frame.

There is an observation point for land prices in Tokiwadaira 1-chome, about 230 m from the blocks of the danchi. The record begins at 470,000 yen per square meter in 1988, and 590,000 yen in 1991 is the highest value in the series up to the 2026 publication of the official land prices (Chika Koji). The lowest up to the 2026 publication is 156,000 yen in 2013, and 2026 is 211,000 yen. If you set the first and last values of the record up to the 2026 publication side by side, 2026 is in the 40% range of 1988.