The Evolution of Hiyoshi Station and the Pedestrian Bridge

2020/02/26

I attended Hiyoshi Campus in 1978. At the time, Hiyoshi Station was an island platform station with two platforms and four tracks where express trains stopped, and it was equipped with the latest automatic ticket gates. However, the Yokohama Municipal Subway and the Tokyu Meguro Line did not yet run through it, and Hiyoshi Tokyu Avenue (originally Hiyoshi Tokyu Department Store) did not exist. The station building was not large enough to be called a station building; the Suruga Bank (now "Suruga Bank") building next to the station was more impressive.

There was something in front of Hiyoshi Station that is no longer there today. It is the pedestrian bridge in front of the station shown in the photo. At that time, the platforms at Hiyoshi Station were at almost the same height as Tsunashima-kaido Avenue, and there were two ticket gates. One was located by going down the stairs from around the center of the platform, passing through an underground passage, and going up the stairs on the Tsunashima-kaido side (East Exit). Crossing the crosswalk in front of you led to Hiyoshi Campus. The other was at the top of the stairs at the end of the platform toward Yokohama, from which you could go both right (West Exit) and left (East Exit). Around the ticket gates, there were commuter pass sales counters and small shops. Exiting this gate and going left, then up a few more steps, led to this pedestrian bridge, which connected directly to the campus. There were also stairs leading down to the left before the few steps up, which led to the side of Tsunashima-kaido, where you could join passengers who had come through the underground passage and cross Tsunashima-kaido at the crosswalk to the campus side. However, since it was faster to cross the pedestrian bridge than to wait for the light, I imagine many Keio students who got off at Hiyoshi Station to attend classes at Hiyoshi Campus used this bridge. On the other hand, I remember that when I was with friends on the way home from campus, we would sometimes walk leisurely down the gentle slope of the ginkgo tree-lined avenue while chatting, and instead of crossing the bridge, we would wait for the light, cross the crosswalk, and enter the station through the ticket gate leading to the underground passage.

This pedestrian bridge remained for a while after Hiyoshi Station was renovated into its current form, but it was removed in August 2002. Being rather impatient, I deeply regret that this bridge, which saved me from having to wait for the traffic light, is gone.