Kitahiroshima-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about fifty-eight thousand (58,171 in 2020). Its course is a gentle rise and fall within a near-plateau. From 57,731 in 2000 it rose once to 60,677 in 2005, then fell gently through 60,353 in 2010 and 59,064 in 2015 to 58,171 in 2020.

Looking inside the figures, the shape of a residential city raised in the suburbs of a large city appears. The share aged 65 and over rose from 15.1% in 2000 to 33.3% in 2020 — more than double in twenty years, passing three in ten. The share of households with children was 19.5% in 2020, and the Childcare Waitlist was zero in both 2024 and 2025. The Fiscal Capacity Index was 0.62 in fiscal 2023 — a level whose own tax revenue covers about six-tenths of expenditure, in the middle range for a small or mid-sized city. The numbers show a suburban residential city deepening in the aging of its resident generation while roughly holding its population. Why it takes this shape cannot be read without tracing the history of settlement and suburbanization.

This town’s skeleton is set by the opening of the land by people who crossed the sea from a far western prefecture, and by the modern current that later folded it into the suburbs of a large city. The old layer is settlement. In 1884 a single man chose the wilderness in what is now the municipal area as ground to be opened, and moved here together with more than a hundred people in some twenty-odd households from a western prefecture on the main island. The year they settled was struck by harsh cold and making a living was not easy, but the people opened the fields and in time put down rice growing. The man who led the village apportioned land to the migrants, the village gradually grew, and it raised itself into a settlement blessed with the produce of rice. In honor of his merit a voice arose proposing that the village be given the name of the man who had led it, but he himself firmly refused, saying "this is a village we opened together," and the village was named after the prefecture, the companions’ homeland.

And in modern times this town changed its character. The farming village that had opened the wilderness became a town in the 1960s, and in time was folded into the commuter belt of the neighboring large city. A railway and roads joining Sapporo and the gateway to the skies came through, housing districts spread over the hills, and it shifted into a suburban residential city where people live. In 1996 the town became a city. From a farming village opened by people who crossed the sea, to the suburbs of a large city. A settlement village that came across from the west was folded into the commuter belt by virtue of its position between Sapporo and the gateway to the skies — Kitahiroshima’s present lies on the seam of those two eras of settlement and suburbanization.

What characterizes Kitahiroshima-shi is that, while carrying the history of settlement and suburbanization, it deepens in the aging of its resident generation while roughly holding its population. From 57,731 in 2000 to 58,171 in 2020, it has barely changed over twenty years. Its location between a large city and the gateway to the skies gives this town the character of a dwelling convenient for commuting, and can be read as having held the population without greatly breaking it. But the content of that population has shifted. That the share aged 65 and over rose from 15.1% in 2000 to 33.3% in 2020, more than doubling, is the mark of a generation that once moved to the hillside housing districts having grown older together.

Meanwhile the share of households with children was 19.5% in 2020, and the Childcare Waitlist too was zero in both 2024 and 2025. A Fiscal Capacity Index of 0.62 is a level whose own tax revenue covers about six-tenths of expenditure, in the middle range for a small or mid-sized city. As a suburban residential city, it can be read that the income of its residents supports the tax source at the middle range. The town opened by people who crossed the sea now deepens in the aging of its resident generation while roughly holding its population. Population near a plateau, aging past three in ten, fiscal stamina in the middle range. This movement, where aging alone advances even though the total does not change, comes down to one circumstance: a generation that once moved together to the hills has grown older together. Watch only the plateau of the total population and this shift in content is not caught.

In Kitahiroshima, an old settlement and a recent suburbanization form layers. One is its history as a settlement village whose wilderness was opened by people who crossed the sea from a far western prefecture — holding the old layer in which the man who led the village declined his own name and chose the homeland’s name. The other is its position, where a railway and roads joining Sapporo and the gateway to the skies pass through, keeping the character of a suburban residential city folded into the commuter belt of a large city. And in recent years this town has come to hold a large ballpark and the facilities around it on the hills, acquiring a new nucleus that gathers people.

That is, Kitahiroshima is a town that began with a settlement that crossed the sea and became the suburbs of a large city. From a farming village opened by people who came across from the west, to a residential city in the commuter belt of a large city — that transition was guided by its position "opening out on hills between Sapporo and the gateway to the skies." Because it was wilderness it called forth the opening by people who crossed the sea; because it was hills between Sapporo and the gateway to the skies it called forth the suburbanization into the large city’s commuter belt. On the old layer of a settlement that crossed the sea from the west, the present of a commuter belt has piled, and onto that, in recent years, a large ballpark has overlapped as a new nucleus. The town of Kitahiroshima is still in the midst of adding its layers one by one.