Hanamaki-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about ninety-three thousand (93,193 in 2020). To read this city’s population one must take the mergers into account. In 2006 Hanamaki City newly merged with three neighboring towns to form the present Hanamaki. The population of the old Hanamaki City was 72,407 in 2005 before the merger, and 101,438 in 2010 after it; from there, through 97,702 in 2015 to 93,193 in 2020, it has fallen since the merger. The step in population between 2005 and 2010 in this article reflects the widening of the city area by that merger.

Look inside and the shape of a rural city of the Kitakami basin appears. The share aged 65 and over rose from 20.4% in 2000 to 34.6% in 2020, passing three-tenths. The share of households with children was 21.1% in 2020, and the Childcare Waitlist was nine in 2024 and zero in 2025. The Fiscal Capacity Index was 0.46 in fiscal 2023 — its own tax revenue does not reach half of expenditure, and its reliance on the local allocation tax is large. A town where a poet imagined an ideal land loses population, in the city area after the merger, and deepens its aging. This row of numbers cannot be read without one poet, and the history of the countryside of the Kitakami basin spreading behind him.

This town’s frame is set by one poet who imagined his native countryside as an ideal land, and by the farming and soil of the Kitakami basin behind him. The central layer is the poet. A man born in this town in 1896 taught at an agricultural school and, facing the soil himself together with the farmers, wrote children’s tales and poems. Taking his native ground here as his model, he imagined an ideal land where beautiful nature and people rich in heart would live, and he gave it a name. That name lives on even now as a word pointing to this town and the countryside of the Kitakami basin, and, together with his works, has made this town’s name known to the world.

What supported this poet’s imagining was the farming and soil of the Kitakami basin. This town is a land of countryside spreading across the Kitakami basin, where farming, rice above all, has long been carried on. That the poet taught at an agricultural school and faced the soil together with the farmers was only because this rural land was here. This town also has a hot-spring district where hot springs are scattered along the rivers, and it is told that the poet too visited those waters. The road by which it became a city mirrors the town. This town walked as a city centered on the countryside of the Kitakami basin, and in 2006 it newly merged with three neighboring towns and widened its city area. The poet who imagined an ideal land, the farming and soil, the hot-spring district, and the countryside of the Kitakami basin — this town’s form stands atop the history, held by the Kitakami basin, of the ideal land a poet imagined.

What sets Hanamaki apart is that, while it holds the history of an ideal land a poet imagined and the countryside of the Kitakami basin, it has lost population in the city area after the merger and deepened its aging. From 101,438 in 2010, after the merger, to 93,193 in 2020, more than eight thousand were lost over ten years. In this town of countryside in the Kitakami basin, where farming was the main livelihood, as it grew hard to make a living by farming alone, the younger generations moved to the cities in search of places to work. The towns added to the city area by the merger each carried their own population decline and aging, so the population of the whole city area can be read as having fallen since the merger. That the share aged 65 and over passed three-tenths at 34.6% in 2020, and that the household-with-children share stays at 21.1%, are expressions of that population structure.

On the other hand, the Childcare Waitlist was nine in 2024 and zero in 2025. The Fiscal Capacity Index of 0.46 is a level whose own tax revenue does not reach half of expenditure, with large reliance on the local allocation tax. It mirrors the limit to the own tax base of this town, which has had farming as its main livelihood as a rural land. The population fell after the merger, aging passed three-tenths, and fiscal strength is weak. These are differing expressions of one flow — a rural city of the Kitakami basin, which has had farming as its main livelihood, shrinking. No one of these numbers alone catches the town’s outline.

In Hanamaki several layers of differing origin overlap. One is its history of having produced a poet who, from his native countryside, imagined an ideal land and gave it a name — a name that lives even now as a word pointing to this town and its countryside. Another is the character of the land that supported the poet’s imagining: the farming and soil of the countryside spreading across the Kitakami basin, and the hot-spring district where hot springs are scattered along the rivers. And the landform of the Kitakami basin gave to this place the farming of the countryside, the hot-spring district, and the ideal land a poet imagined.

What is striking is that this town is still called by the name of an ideal land that one poet imagined. A man born in the countryside of the Kitakami basin pictured, from his native ground here, a land where beautiful nature and people rich in heart would live, and he gave it a name. That imagined name lives on as a word pointing to this real town and its countryside. The farming of the countryside, the hot-spring district along the rivers, and one person’s imagining — where these three melted into one in the Kitakami basin, the present Hanamaki stands.