Morioka-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 290,000 (289,731 in 2020). Over the five years from 297,631 in 2015, about eight thousand were lost. It is a prefectural capital of a scale within reach of three hundred thousand, having entered a gentle phase of decline.

The number of children too is thinning. Those under 15 fell from 36,828 (2015) to 33,602 (2020), about three thousand over five years. In the same period the share aged 65 and over rose from 24.8% to 27.6%. Yet the aging rate is on the lower side among the prefectural capitals of northern Tohoku, and the share of households with children, at 18.9% (2020), is slightly thicker than Aomori or Akita. The Official Land Price of residential land is around 46,000 yen per m², also on the higher side among the nearby prefectural capitals. The Fiscal Capacity Index is 0.71, higher than Aomori or Akita — though it does not reach 1.0, and it shares the same structure of supporting standard expenditure with the local allocation tax. The Childcare Waitlist is 0 (2025). The slightly greater margin in these numbers than the nearby prefectural capitals shows its source when you trace back to the history of a castle town set at the confluence of two rivers.

Morioka’s frame is a concentric urban area that coiled around a castle as its core where two rivers meet. The very form of the town conveys the castle town’s blueprint to this day.

At the end of the warring-states age, the twenty-sixth head of the Sannohe Nambu clan, Nambu Nobunao, had his domain confirmed by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and the Morioka domain was established. Town-building advanced greatly in the time of the second lord, Toshinao. A castle was set at the confluence of the two rivers, the Kitakami and the Nakatsu; a double moat was run around it; outside the moat the quarters of merchants and craftsmen surrounded it; and farther out samurai residences and temples were placed — a ring-shaped urban area forming, with roles arranged concentrically around the castle. In the terms of historical geography, it is the concentric structure of status and function typical of a castle town. The two rivers became natural moats and also waterways for carrying goods. The layers of castle, samurai, townsfolk, and temple-and-shrine pile up with the river landform as their bone.

Entering the modern era, with the abolition of the domains the Morioka domain became Morioka Prefecture, later Iwate Prefecture. With the municipal system of 1889 the city of Morioka was born, and modernization advanced as the prefectural capital. In the Heisei era it merged with surrounding villages, and in 2008 it shifted to a core city — a city that handles in its own hands some powers close to those of a prefecture. The history by which a castle town set at the confluence of two rivers carried its role on to a prefectural capital, and then to a core city of northern Tohoku, decides the present city’s frame.

The character of Morioka’s numbers is that, although population and children are both falling, compared with the nearby prefectural capitals of northern Tohoku the angle of decline is somewhat gentler and the child-rearing layer is comparatively thick. Those under 15 fell by about three thousand over five years, but the aging rate, at 27.6%, is on the lower side than Aomori’s 30.8% or Akita’s 31.2%. The household-with-children share of 18.9% is the thickest of the three cities.

The Childcare Waitlist is 0 (2025). Here too caution is needed in reading. In a phase where the absolute number of children falls, a zero includes the aspect that supply catches up more easily as the very number of children wishing to enter thins. But in Morioka’s case, the decline in children being gentler than nearby and the household-with-children share being thicker, the circumstances behind the zero are not so one-directional as in Aomori or Akita. Even among the prefectural capitals of northern Tohoku, a structure in which, as a core city, it bears the center of a wider urban area including its surroundings and people gather from other areas of the prefecture may be softening the angle of decline somewhat. Still, that too is one average of a number, and the circumstances must differ depending on which block of the town you look at. The angle of decline, the thickness of the child-rearing layer, the zero waitlist — none can be told alone; only bound together with the standing of a core city that gathers people from its surroundings does the thread run true.

In Morioka several functions of differing eras pile up. One is the relics of the castle town set at the confluence of the Kitakami and Nakatsu rivers — the concentric urban area and the castle ruins remaining as the town’s core to this day. Another is the function of administration as the prefectural capital of Iwate, bearing the prefecture’s center ever since the municipal system of 1889. Further, there is the standing of a core city to which it shifted in 2008, a city that handles in its own hands some powers close to those of a prefecture, positioned at the center of an urban area of northern Tohoku.

Four hundred years ago a castle was set where two rivers meet, and moats, townsfolk quarters, and samurai residences surrounded it in concentric circles. In the same place now a prefectural office stands and the central functions of a core city turn. In the castle age, in the prefectural-capital age, and in the present core-city age, the one thing unchanged is only this siting — that two rivers meet. The rivers that became natural moats and also waterways have, century after century, kept drawing in one different function after another.