Tomakomai-shi

In the most recent Population Census the population is about 170,000 (170,113 in 2020). In the five years from 172,737 in 2015 it lost some twenty-six hundred. It is a city that has entered a phase of gentle decline.

What is worth seeing here is that the number of children is thinning faster than the total. Those under 15 fell from 22,401 in 2015 to 20,426 in 2020, nearly two thousand fewer in five years. Over the same period the share aged 65 and over rose from 25.7% to 29.4%. Behind the gentle decline of the total, the contents are surely shifting their centre of gravity to the older side. The residential land price is around ¥20,000 per m² (2026; ¥19,700/m²), a low level among Japan’s regional cities. The Fiscal Capacity Index is 0.75 (2023); it does not reach 1.0, a structure where part of standard expenditure is supplemented by the local allocation tax. This is the standard figure of a regional city where, even as an industrial city, own tax revenue alone does not cover all expenditure. The childcare waitlist is zero (2025), and the household-with-children rate is 18.5% (2020). Why this shape arises cannot be read without tracing back the origin whereby paper and a port were set down upon a fishing village.

Tomakomai’s skeleton is a layer of industry set down upon a northern shore from outside. The place name itself conveys this land’s original form. “Tomakomai” derives from the Ainu “To-makoma-i” — the river that goes deep into the marsh — and was once a small fishing village. What changed that village’s fate was a single mill brought in from outside.

The first foundation is paper. In 1910 Oji Paper set down a mill here. The geographical conditions — the water of Lake Shikotsu behind it could be used for hydropower, and the forests for raw material were near — drew the mill to this shore. It is a textbook case, in the terms of economic geography, of locational conditions, water and raw material, pulling an industry in. Further, in 1943 a National Policy Pulp mill (today’s Nippon Paper) was added at Yufutsu, and Tomakomai came to be known as a town of paper and pulp. In 1948 the town, its population having passed thirty thousand, was incorporated as a city.

The second foundation is the port. Tomakomai’s coast is shallow and shelving, and was not originally a natural harbour where large ships could berth. So a method was taken of cutting into the land to build an artificial harbour. In 1963 the West Port District opened as the world’s first inland dug-in harbour, and in 1980 the East Port District was added. This choice — to make by human hands what was not there — became the backbone supporting the industrial city’s logistics. And in 1990 Toyota Motor announced its siting in the city’s western industrial park, beginning the building of a plant the next year. A paper mill set down upon a fishing village, a dug-in harbour taking on the logistics, the automobile added — this town’s form stands less upon a natural landform than upon the origin of industry set down from outside and an artificial port.

What characterizes Tomakomai-shi is that, while the total population fell by some twenty-six hundred, the number of children fell by nearly two thousand. It is a composition where almost all of the total’s decline can be explained by the fall in children. Even a town that has gathered workers and their families as an industrial city is not off the flow whereby the absolute number of children thins.

Meanwhile, the childcare waitlist is held at zero (2025). But this zero should be read not as the result of supply catching up with demand in a town where children are increasing, but as a zero amid the very absolute number of children thinning. The same zero waitlist carries an entirely different meaning depending on whether children are increasing or decreasing behind it. In Tomakomai’s case, overlay the household-with-children rate of 18.5% (2020) with the fact that those under 15 fell by nearly two thousand in five years, and it appears as a zero in a phase where childcare demand itself is gently shrinking. Children thin fast, the share of the elderly nears three in ten, yet the waitlist settles at zero — those several flows advancing at once is this industrial city’s present standing. Of the total decline of twenty-six hundred, nearly two thousand being children, that simultaneity is condensed in the breakdown.

The functions Tomakomai holds rest not on what nature gave, but on a piling-up of making by human hands what was not there and setting it down. One is the paper-and-pulp mill complex that has held up the town for over a century, with Oji Paper and Nippon Paper (Yufutsu) still sited here. The other is Tomakomai Port, cut into the land and built by human hands, where the West and East Port Districts have become one of Hokkaido’s principal gateways for logistics. Further, the automobile-related plants added in the western industrial park thicken a layer of industry not weighted to paper alone.

A paper mill set down upon a fishing village, a dug-in harbour bored into a shallow shelving coast, an automobile plant added to it. Tomakomai’s starting point was neither a natural harbour nor a town of resources, but a mere shore. Paper, port and automobile alike were, in origin, brought in from outside and placed here by human hands — that piling-up of the artificial, making what was not there to draw in function, is this town’s present figure.

Lay out Tomakomai’s numbers and the indicators line up that show a mid-sized industrial city of Hokkaido at the border of maturity and contraction: a slight fall in population, fewer children, advancing aging, a fiscal capacity of 0.75. But what I (Atlas) want to be careful of through the eye of accounting is how to read that figure of 0.75. That it does not reach 1.0 means a structure where part of standard expenditure is supplemented by the local allocation tax, but that in itself is a figure shared with many of the country’s regional cities, not a measure of a town’s superiority or inferiority. Holding a layer of industry — paper, port and automobile — yet not covering all expenditure with own tax revenue alone: this is the standard structure of a regional city, unchanged even for an industrial one.

What is unexpected is the fact that this city of one hundred seventy thousand began as a mere shallow shelving shore where not a single large ship could berth. There was no fine harbour, nor resources that came up when dug. There were only two conditions that of themselves do not make a town — the water of Lake Shikotsu behind it, and the nearby forests. There, in 1910, a paper mill was set down relying on that water and raw material; half a century later, on the reasoning that if large ships could not berth one could dig the land, the world’s first inland dug-in harbour was bored; and an automobile plant was added. Onto a shore where there was nothing, people made what was not there one after another and screwed function into place — the sum of that artificial will is today’s population of one hundred seventy thousand, and the fiscal capacity of 0.75. From their very starting points, this faces the opposite way from Kushiro or Otaru, where nature set the town down. If a reader is to measure this town’s numbers, what should first be recalled is the single point that this was originally a shallow, shelving beach with nothing on it.