Sendai

In the most recent Population Census the population is about 1.1 million (1,096,704 in 2020). Over the five years from 1,082,159 in 2015 it added about fifteen thousand. It is the only designated city in the Tohoku region to exceed a million.

The number of children is held nearly flat. Those under 15 went from 129,309 (2015) to 128,665 (2020), almost unchanged over five years. Over the same period the share aged 65 and over rose from 21.7% to 23.5%; aging advances while the absolute number of children is maintained — two flows running at once. Households with children make up 18.2% (2020), somewhat higher than Sapporo or Nagoya. The residential land price is around 126,000 yen per m². The Fiscal Capacity Index is 0.88; the part short of 1.0 is filled through the local allocation tax and the like, but among designated cities this is a higher level. The childcare waitlist is 0 children (2025). What is worth seeing here is that these are averages for a city of a million. The municipal area is divided into five wards — Aoba, Miyagino, Wakabayashi, Taihaku and Izumi — and the central wards differ from the suburban wards in character. The gaps between wards are flattened out and do not appear in this single figure. So why has a million-city arrived at this balance? That question cannot be solved without tracing the origins of the castle town Date Masamune drew on the river terrace.

Sendai’s skeleton is a blueprint a single lord drew on a river terrace. From 1600, Date Masamune built Sendai Castle (Aoba Castle) and a castle town on the river terrace of the Hirose River, making it the center of the 620,000-koku Sendai domain. The town was ordered on a grid, with samurai, merchant and temple-shrine districts arranged. A “castle town set down by a lord’s plan,” in the terms of historical geography, was this city’s first foundation.

The second foundation was greenery. The domain encouraged planting cedar, pine and other trees within the residences, and over long years the residence groves grew. The thickness of that greenery came to be called the “City of Trees” from around the start of the Taisho era, and in 1970 it was fixed as the official designation for Sendai. The blueprint of the castle town raised the residence groves, and those groves became the very name of the city. Much of the old castle town’s form was lost in the wartime air raids on Sendai, but a town-building that values greenery was carried on after reconstruction.

The third foundation was learning. Universities and institutions of higher education, beginning with Tohoku University, gather in Sendai, and it has been known as a “city of learning” where young students gather. And in 1989 Sendai was designated the only government-ordinance city in the Tohoku region, divided into five wards. Onto the skeleton drawn as a castle town, a layer of greenery — the City of Trees — and a layer of people — the city of learning — were laid, and the central city of Tohoku rose. This city’s form is stacked on the blueprint of a castle town from four hundred years ago.

What characterizes Sendai is that while the total population rose by fifteen thousand, the number of children is held nearly flat. As befits a central city that gathers people from the prefectures of Tohoku through study and work, neither the decline in children seen in Sapporo nor the consolidations common in regional cities of population decline appear here; instead they show as a quiet stability. Households with children make up 18.2%, on the higher side among designated cities.

The childcare waitlist is 0 children (2025). But this 0 cannot be read the same as the Sapporo-style “balance reached as children decline.” In Sendai, where the absolute number of children is maintained and the share of households with children is on the higher side, it is closer to read it as a 0 resulting from supply held in balance as a steady childcare demand continues. Even the same “zero waitlist” shifts in meaning depending on whether children are falling or being held behind it. The number of children does not move, the elderly share rose two points in five years, and yet the total keeps rising — in a million-city where several such flows run at once, the figures for children and childcare stay within a small range of variation. And this too is an average across five wards: the circumstances cannot be the same in the central Aoba ward and the suburban Izumi ward. The stability of children, the gentleness of aging and the population gain are not strengths to be counted independently. They are merely results branching in different directions from a single centrality — that people gather here from the prefectures of Tohoku.

Many strata of different eras are stacked in Sendai. One is the streetscape of the “City of Trees” that grew on the skeleton of the castle town Date Masamune drew, where a town-building that values greenery, beginning with the residence groves, supports this city’s character even after recovery from war damage. Another is its face as a “city of learning,” where institutions of higher education beginning with Tohoku University gather and young students come from the prefectures of Tohoku. Sendai also carries, as the only designated city in the Tohoku region, the central commercial and economic functions of Tohoku.

The rows of trees along Aoba-dori that keep their shade even in summer, the greenery that remains of the residence groves covering the streets, and the young students passing among them — walk through Sendai, and the greenery raised by the castle town’s blueprint and the youth drawn in by the city of learning are plain to the eye and the skin. Four hundred years ago, Masamune drew a grid castle town on the river terrace. The cedar and pine the domain encouraged in the residences became, over long years, the residence groves; from the Taisho era the city was called the “City of Trees,” and young students gathered around the core of Tohoku University. The castle, the residence groves and the universities, traced back, are all stacked on that single blueprint.