Obihiro-shi

In the most recent Population Census the population is about 167,000 (166,536 in 2020). From 173,030 in 2000 it lost some sixty-five hundred in twenty years, a gentle decline continuing.

What is worth seeing here is that the fall in children and the aging are advancing together. Those under 15 fell from 27,077 in 2000 to 19,073 in 2020, some eight thousand fewer in twenty years. The share aged 65 and over rose from 15.3% to 29.4%, nearing a third. The household-with-children rate is 17.4% (2020), a level befitting a regional city where aging has advanced. The number of elementary schools held at twenty-six for a long time, becoming twenty-five in 2022. The childcare waitlist has been zero in recent years; the Fiscal Capacity Index was 0.60 in fiscal 2023. Own tax revenue alone covers only about six-tenths of expenditure, and a structure leaning on the local allocation tax shows through. Why this shape arises cannot be read without tracing back the origin of the settlement of Tokachi.

Obihiro’s skeleton is set where people broke open a wilderness that had been empty. In 1882 the Banseisha, a body devoted to the settlement of Hokkaido, was formed around Yoda Benzo, who came from Shizuoka and studied at Keio Gijuku. Receiving a grant of undeveloped land from the government, the party left Yokohama in May of the following year, 1883, and entered the land of Tokachi. Not a land where people gathered of themselves, but one people boarded for the sake of settlement — this town’s starting point lies there.

But the settlement was a string of harsh trials. The party that settled was struck by a wildfire from a deer hunt, and then by a swarm of locusts that devoured the crops. The millet they sowed barely bore, through poor weather and the harm of birds and beasts, and the first settlers are said to have dwindled to a handful of households. Opening the fields anew however many times they fell — through that struggle, the foundation of dryland farming making use of the fertile soil of the Tokachi Plain was built. Yoda Benzo later came to be called the “sage of settlement,” the forefather of the pioneering.

This settlement decided the present character of Obihiro. The location at the center of the Tokachi Plain became a base gathering agricultural produce and farm-related industry, as the center of a vast dryland-farming belt. The character of a central agricultural city that opened up a wilderness remains at the town’s footing a century and a half on. From an empty wilderness, through a struggling settlement, to the central city of Tokachi’s agriculture — this town’s form stands upon the origin of the settlement begun in 1883.

What characterizes Obihiro-shi is that, though it is the central agricultural city of the Tokachi Plain, its population and its children keep falling gently. That appears in the living-infrastructure numbers as a steady shrinkage. The elementary schools in the city held at twenty-six for a long time, but fell by one to twenty-five in 2022 as the children thinned.

The childcare waitlist has held at zero. But this carries less the aspect of demand being met than the aspect of the absolute number of children falling by some eight thousand in twenty years and slack arising in capacity. It is a composition seen again and again in regional cities where the absolute number of children thins. The figure of a zero waitlist must be read not as “ease of child-rearing” alone, but together with the background that the number of children itself is thinning. Holding a certain population as a regional city with agriculture at its base, yet amid the outflow of the younger generations and the falling birthrate, the children thin and aging nears a third. In the difference of that one school, from twenty-six down to twenty-five, the fall of eight thousand children is quietly folded.

The functions Obihiro holds stand not upon people gathering of themselves, but upon a will that boarded for the wilderness. One is the position near the center of the Tokachi Plain, a base where agricultural produce and farm-related industry gather as the center of a vast dryland-farming belt. The other is the very history of settlement, beginning with the Banseisha’s entry in 1883, where the origin of a city that broke open a wilderness conveys the town’s making to this day.

From a struggling settlement, to the establishment of dryland farming, and on to the central city of Tokachi. The vast wilderness that spread at the center of the Tokachi Plain was not a land where people gathered of themselves. People boarded to obtain fields and, enduring wildfire and locusts, broke it open — Obihiro’s present reads as the fruit that the will of that settlement bore over a century and a half.

Lay out Obihiro’s numbers and the indicators of a gently shrinking regional city line up: population decline, fewer children, aging nearing a third, a fiscal capacity of 0.60. But what I (Atlas) want to read through the eye of accounting is the meaning of that Fiscal Capacity Index of 0.60. It shows that own tax revenue covers only about six-tenths of expenditure, the rest leaning on the local allocation tax. Unlike a city with a thick industrial tax base, the fiscal structure of a regional city with agriculture at its base appears in this figure.

Here is one gap to feel in the body. Say “the Tokachi Plain” and one pictures fields stretching to the horizon as far as the eye can see, one of Japan’s richest farming belts. That image of richness somehow does not square with the numbers — children down by some eight thousand in twenty years, aging nearing a third, one elementary school gone. For the soil being rich and the younger generations staying there are separate matters. The fields may be fertile, yet the farmers who work them fall amid mechanization and scaling-up, and the young find their work moving to the cities. In the settlements dotted among the vast fields, the voices of children thin year by year — rich soil, and a thinning population. Draw that difference of texture into your own living, and this town’s figure of 0.60 begins, for the first time, to carry warmth.