Towada-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about sixty thousand (60,378 in 2020). This city’s population carries a step caused by a merger. In 2005 Towada City newly merged with Towadako Town to form the present city area. Where in 2000 the figure was 63,363 for the old Towada City, with Towadako Town added it became 68,359 in 2005, and from there it fell gently after the merger — 66,110 in 2010, 63,429 in 2015, 60,378 in 2020.

Look inside and the shape of a regional city in northern Tohoku appears. The share aged 65 and over rose from 17.4% in 2000 to 33.7% in 2020 — nearly doubling in twenty years and passing three-tenths. The share of households with children was 18.6% in 2020, and the Childcare Waitlist was zero in both 2024 and 2025. The Fiscal Capacity Index was 0.43 in fiscal 2023 — its own tax revenue does not reach half of expenditure, and its reliance on the local allocation tax is large. A grid-pattern planned city loses population and deepens its aging after the merger, while keeping the Childcare Waitlist at zero. To read what lies behind this picture, one must return to the history of the reclamation that drew water onto a wilderness and of the city planning that designed the town itself.

This town’s frame is set by an upland poor in water, called Sanbongi-hara, and by the modern undertaking that drew water onto it. The old layer is the reclamation. In 1855 a samurai — the grandfather of a man later known as an educator — set to work reclaiming this barren upland. He drew up a plan to lead water from the Oirase River, which flowed far off, drove a long tunnel and channel through the ground, and in 1859 completed a man-made river. By this man-made river water spread across the upland, and the foundation was laid for reclamation that turned wilderness into fields.

His son then, as he carried the reclamation further, designed the town itself. He regulated the blocks, ran irrigation channels through the town, and laid out separate zones for living, for tilling, and for trade. This grid-pattern street plan is said to have been modeled on an old capital, and is known as one of the forerunners of modern city planning. In a later age a broad tree-lined avenue was laid out, running east and west in front of the city hall, planted with pine and cherry, and became the town’s emblem. Drawing water onto a wilderness, designing a grid-pattern town — this town’s form stands atop the history of reclamation and city planning, by which the upland of Sanbongi-hara was turned into fields and a town by human hands.

What sets Towada apart is that, while it holds the history of a planned city born of reclamation and city planning, it has lost population and deepened its aging after the merger. From 68,359 in 2005, when Towadako Town was added, to 60,378 in 2020, about eight thousand people were lost over fifteen years. As a regional city in northern Tohoku, within the flow of younger generations moving to Sendai or the metropolitan area, the population can be read as having fallen gently. That the share aged 65 and over nearly doubled in twenty years to pass three-tenths at 33.7% in 2020 is one expression of that population structure.

On the other hand, the Childcare Waitlist has stayed at zero. Against the fallen population, the childcare capacity can be read as having been kept. The Fiscal Capacity Index of 0.43 is a level whose own tax revenue does not reach even half of expenditure, with large reliance on the local allocation tax. As a regional city of northern Tohoku built on agriculture, this mirrors the limit to its own tax base. The population falls, aging passes three-tenths, and fiscal strength is weak. These numbers each photograph, from their own side, one phase of an agriculture-based regional city of northern Tohoku shrinking gently. No one of them alone catches the town’s outline.

In Towada several layers of differing origin overlap. One is its history of the Sanbongi-hara reclamation begun at the close of the Edo period and the man-made river that drew water from the Oirase — an old layer that turned wilderness into fields. The other is the design of a grid-pattern street plan said to be modeled on an old capital, leaving the character of a forerunner of modern city planning. And the pine-and-cherry tree-lined avenue running in front of the city hall gives this town a structure of its own as the emblem of a planned city.

Unexpectedly, this town is neither a castle town nor a post town; it begins from a dry, barren upland without water. While many regional cities grow from a river, a highway, or a castle as their starting point, Towada has as its starting point human design — a man-made river drawing water from the Oirase and a grid-pattern street plan modeled on an old capital. People led water through the poor upland at the foot of Mount Hakkoda and drew the blocks — and from that starting point comes today’s grid-pattern townscape.