Kitami-shi

In the most recent Population Census the population is about 115,000 (115,480 in 2020). This city’s population has a step caused by a merger. In 2006 the former Kitami-shi merged with the towns of Tanno, Tokoro and Rubeshibe, becoming a wide city area reaching as far as the Sea of Okhotsk. The former Kitami-shi before the merger was nearly flat, at 110,040 in 2000 and 110,715 in 2005; after the merger it became 125,689 in 2010 with the four municipalities combined, and from there fell gently after the merger, to 121,226 in 2015 and 115,480 in 2020.

Look at the contents and the figure of a Hokkaido regional city appears. The share aged 65 and over reached 33.6% in 2020, passing a third. The household-with-children rate is on the low side at 16.3%, and the childcare waitlist was zero in both 2024 and 2025. The Fiscal Capacity Index was 0.43 in fiscal 2023; own tax revenue does not reach half of expenditure, and reliance on the allocation tax is large. The figure of a town once a peppermint kingdom, losing population and deepening aging after the merger while holding a zero waitlist, appears in the numbers. Why this shape arises cannot be read without tracing back the origins of peppermint and the shift in farming.

Kitami’s skeleton is set by the geography of an inland dryland-farming belt and by the memory of a single crop that ruled the world in the modern era. From the Meiji period on, this Kitami region became a great producer of peppermint. Around 1939, the peppermint produced by the Kitami region came to make up about seventy percent of the world’s, and its cultivated area is said to have reached some twenty-one thousand hectares. A literal “peppermint kingdom,” with fields covered edge to edge in mint, stood on this inland ground.

But that kingdom did not last long. After the war, as chemically synthesized peppermint spread through the world, demand for natural peppermint thinned rapidly. Kitami’s fields changed their shape from peppermint to dryland crops, beginning with onions. The town experienced, within a single generation, the rise and the withdrawal of a single crop that had ruled the world. It is, in the terms of economic geography, an example of a producing region dependent on a single crop recomposing its crops amid a structural change in the market.

And this town changed its form greatly in 2006. The former Kitami-shi merged with inland Tanno, with Tokoro facing the Sea of Okhotsk, and with Rubeshibe of hot springs and forestry, and a wide city area reaching from the interior to the Sea of Okhotsk was born. Ruling the world in peppermint, recomposing its farming, and making four towns into one — this town’s form stands upon the origin of a peppermint kingdom that an inland dryland-farming belt carried.

What characterizes Kitami-shi is that a producing region of peppermint that once ruled the world loses population after the merger, even while it recomposes its farming. From 2010, just after the merger, to 2020, some ten thousand were lost, and the share aged 65 and over rose to 33.6%. With areas carrying agriculture and forestry within the wide city area, and amid a flow of the younger generations moving to larger cities such as Sapporo and Asahikawa, the fall in population and the deepening of aging read as occurring at once. The low household-with-children rate of 16.3% is one expression of that population composition.

Even so, the childcare waitlist held at zero in both 2024 and 2025. Amid a falling population, the childcare capacity reads as keeping pace with demand. On the other hand, the Fiscal Capacity Index of 0.43 is a level where own tax revenue does not even reach half of expenditure, with large reliance on the allocation tax. Against the expenditure that supports the wide city area, it mirrors how the tax base of an agriculture-centered region has its limits. A town that once ruled the world’s peppermint now loses population and deepens aging, while holding a zero waitlist, its finance propped by the allocation tax. A falling population, deepening aging, a thin tax base — these are not scattered numbers; they are separate expressions of a single structure of an Okhotsk-region town that holds an agricultural belt within a wide city area.

The functions Kitami holds came to wear several faces, the inland dryland-farming belt having reached the sea by merger. One is the origin of a peppermint kingdom that produced seventy percent of the world’s mint, with an origin as an inland dryland-farming belt that ruled the world with a single crop. The other is the dryland farming, onions and the like, recomposed after peppermint withdrew, keeping the character of an inland agricultural belt. And Tokoro, facing the Sea of Okhotsk, taken in by the 2006 merger, adds the face of the sea to an inland town.

From the fields of a peppermint kingdom, to a ground of dryland crops such as onions, and on to a wide city area facing the Sea of Okhotsk by the 2006 merger. Opened as an inland dryland-farming belt, and reaching out by merger as far as the sea — this town stands here now as the core of the Okhotsk region, having bundled the interior and the sea into one. The rise and fall of peppermint and the joining of four towns lie folded beneath that breadth.

Lay out Kitami’s numbers and the indicators of an Okhotsk-region town that has recomposed its farming line up: post-merger population decline, an aging rate of 33.6%, a household-with-children rate of 16.3%, a fiscal capacity of 0.43. But what I (Atlas) want to note first through the eye of accounting is the fact that the step in population is due to the merger. The 110,715 of 2005 is the figure of the former Kitami-shi alone, and cannot simply be joined for reading with the 125,689 of 2010 that combined three towns. Reading the slope of decline — some ten thousand lost in the ten years after the merger — is the proper course.

Set a span of time before the eye and a reduced model of a producing region facing structural change in the market is folded into this town’s numbers. Around 1939, the peppermint of the Kitami region made up about seventy percent of the world’s, fields covered edge to edge in mint. Then, after the war, as chemically synthesized peppermint spread through the world, demand for natural mint collapsed within a single generation, and the kingdom withdrew. An industry that held seventy percent of the world lost its footing in barely a dozen-odd years, through nothing but the spread of chemical synthesis that happened outside its own fields — this town once passed through that steep fall. Even so, it recomposed the fields to onions and remains, even now, the core of the Okhotsk region. From the height of holding seventy percent of the world, through the stall brought by the synthetic product, to the present after the shift to onions. This town’s numbers show in advance, over half a century, what comes next for a producing region prosperous on a single crop.