Aomori-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about two hundred seventy-five thousand (275,192 in 2020). Over the five years from 287,648 in 2015, it fell by more than twelve thousand. It is a prefectural capital that has already entered the phase of decline.

Looking inside the figures, the thinning of the number of children is clear. Those under 15 fell by about four thousand five hundred over five years, from 32,528 in 2015 to 28,040 in 2020. In the same period the share aged 65 and over rose from 27.9% to 30.8%, passing three in ten. Alongside the falling total, the center of gravity is moving toward the elderly side. The residential land price is around 39,000 yen per m², and the household-with-children share was 17.9% (2020). The Fiscal Capacity Index is 0.55, not reaching 1.0 — this is the structure common to regional cities whose own tax revenue alone cannot cover standard expenditure, with the gap filled by the local allocation tax, and it is not a matter of good or bad. The Childcare Waitlist is 0 (2025), but what I want to note here is that this zero occurs at the same time as a decline in the absolute number of children. Why these numbers take this form cannot be read without tracing back the town’s origin as a port town.

Aomori’s skeleton lies in its origin as a town opened artificially for the sake of a port, rather than as a castle town. Whereas many prefectural capitals have a castle town as their mother body, Aomori was a new town that a domain — which held the separate castle town of Hirosaki — created for a different purpose.

In 1625 the second lord of the Hirosaki Domain, Tsugaru Nobuhira, was permitted by the shogunate to newly open a port, on the shore of Mutsu Bay, for shipping the domain’s rice to Edo by sea. From the following year, 1626, he ordered his retainers to gather people, and the town-building began in earnest. That is, this town did not grow large by people settling there naturally; it was a port town placed deliberately for the economic purpose of shipping rice. It is a typical case of what economic geography calls a city born with a function given first. Aomori, which grew as a commercial port, had by the end of the seventeenth century become a town second in scale only to the castle town of Hirosaki.

What moved its fortunes a second time was modern administration and transport. When Aomori Prefecture was established in 1871 by the abolition of the domains and establishment of prefectures, the town of Aomori became the prefectural capital. In 1898 it took city status. And rail and sea routes turned the town into a hub of distribution. The Tohoku Main Line was opened in 1891 and the Ou Main Line in 1894, and in 1908 the Seikan ferry (the route linking Aomori and Hakodate) went into service. The northern terminus of the railways of Honshu, and the transfer point for ships crossing to Hokkaido — Aomori held the position of a hinge joining Honshu and Hokkaido. The history by which a town created to carry rice handed on its role to a town of the prefectural capital and the ferry determines the skeleton of the present city.

The figure in Aomori’s numbers that most calls for re-reading is that the Childcare Waitlist is 0 (2025). A zero waitlist, read by the letters alone, looks like the story that the childcare capacity is sufficient. But in this city it occurs at the same time as a decline in the absolute number of children. Those under 15 fell by about four thousand five hundred over five years. In a phase where the very number of children wanting to enter is thinning, the childcare slots come to keep pace with demand more easily. The background is the exact opposite of bringing supply up to keep pace as the number of children rises.

Even with the same “zero waitlist,” the meaning changes entirely depending on whether it was achieved as children rose or as children fell. In Aomori’s case, this zero is placed within a flow in which the share of the elderly passes three in ten and both the total population and the number of children fall. The household-with-children share is 17.9%, and the share of child-raising layers among households cannot be called thick. Look only at the surface number and one is tempted to read it as “easy to raise children,” but unless it is set beside the quietly advancing population dynamics beneath it, the meaning of this zero is mistaken.

In Aomori, several functions are layered upon a single siting. One is Aomori Port, opened to ship rice, which remains today as a harbor facing Mutsu Bay and goes on telling of this city’s origin. Another is the administrative function of being the prefectural capital of Aomori Prefecture — since the abolition of the domains, this city has borne the central role for the whole prefecture. Furthermore, it is the northern point of arrival of the railways of Honshu, was once linked to Hokkaido by the Seikan ferry, and still keeps the character of a transport hub joining Honshu and Hokkaido.

Aomori began from a town created deliberately to bear the function of a port, separate from the castle town of Hirosaki. From a port for carrying rice, to the prefectural capital, to the town of the ferry — the condition of being “a land where sea and land meet at the northern end of Honshu” has carried different functions in each age. The commercial port, the prefectural government, and the railway terminus all rest, in origin, upon the same condition of a siting facing Mutsu Bay. Not a castle town grown naturally, but a siting that drew in one new role after another, has shaped the outline of this city.