Ishinomaki-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 140,000 (140,151 in 2020). What I want to note first here is that the surge of more than forty-seven thousand, from 119,818 in 2000 to 167,324 in 2005, is not the result of people naturally increasing. It is because the city area widened all at once in the 2005 merger; the step in the numbers reflects that merger. That the number of schools leapt from nineteen to forty-three in 2005 is also due to the same merger.

Upon that, look at the content after the merger, and from the peak of 167,324 in 2005 it has fallen by twenty-seven thousand to 140,151 in 2020. This decline can be read as the natural decrease common to regional cities, layered with the damage of the 2011 tsunami. Those under 15 fell by more than a third, from 22,851 after the merger in 2005 to 14,579 in 2020. The share aged 65 and over rose from 17.8% in 2000 to 33.2% in 2020, passing three-tenths by a wide margin. The share of households with children was 18.7% (2020). The Childcare Waitlist has been a few in recent years, and the Fiscal Capacity Index was 0.53 in fiscal 2023. A city area widened by the merger is rapidly shrinking, with a disaster set in the midst of it. The true identity of this step, and of this shrinkage, takes shape only when one returns to one river — the Kitakami — and to the history of the port it brought.

Ishinomaki’s frame is set by the rerouting of one river. At the beginning of the Edo period, Kawamura Magobei, a retainer of the Sendai-domain lord Date Masamune, from around 1616 to 1626 ordered the flow of the Kitakami River and its tributaries, and opened a route of river shipping by which goods could be carried by boat from around inland Morioka and Mizusawa down to Ishinomaki. Not a river left to nature, but a waterway ordered by human hands to carry rice to the sea, became this town’s foundation.

What that waterway carried was the great quantity of rice harvested in the basin of the Kitakami River. The rice that came down the river gathered at Ishinomaki, was here transferred to seagoing ships, and was sent far away to Edo. The rice sent from the Sendai domain to Edo is said to have reached two hundred thousand koku in good years. Ishinomaki flourished, as a node where the two carriages of river and sea met, until it was counted among the two great commercial ports of Oshu, alongside Sakata on the Sea-of-Japan side. Rice came down the river, was transferred to seagoing ships at the port, and headed for Edo — this was the character of early-modern Ishinomaki.

Upon that port town, two great events overlapped. One is the merger of 2005. The old Ishinomaki City newly merged with six neighboring towns and widened into a town holding a broad city area that included the shoreline of the Sanriku coast. The other is the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011, in which the riverside center and the coastal settlements were grievously damaged by the tsunami. Kawamura Magobei ordered the river, it flourished as the port for the carriage of domain rice, it widened through the merger, and then it met the tsunami — this town’s form stands atop the river Kitakami and the history of the port it brought.

What sets Ishinomaki apart is that, after its city area widened all at once through the merger, both natural decrease and disaster overlapped, and its population is rapidly shrinking. From 2005 after the merger to 2020, the total population fell by more than twenty-seven thousand, and those under 15 thinned by more than a third. This can be read as the outflow of younger generations and the falling birthrate common to regional cities, layered with the damage of the 2011 tsunami. A great disaster works in the direction of hastening population decline.

The numbers of daily-life infrastructure mirror this shrinkage too. Elementary schools leapt from nineteen to forty-three with the 2005 merger, the school networks of the six old towns bundled together as they were. After that they fell in step with the decline of children, and in recent years have moved at about thirty-two. It is the shape of schools that increased all at once and then quietly fell along with the number of children. The Childcare Waitlist remains a few in recent years. Flourishing as the river port that Kawamura Magobei ordered, holding a broad city area through the merger, and rapidly shrinking after the tsunami — the shape of a school network that increased all at once and then quietly fell, the step in population, and the shrinkage are not separate events. One and the same course — widening through the merger and shrinking with a disaster in between — shows its face at the same time in numbers here and there.

In Ishinomaki several layers tied to river and sea overlap. One is its character as a port opening at the mouth of the Kitakami River, which flourished, through the river shipping that Kawamura Magobei ordered, as a node where the carriage of river and sea met, sending inland rice out to the sea. Another is the broad city area bundled by the 2005 merger, holding the shoreline of the Sanriku coast and the inland old-town areas together as one city. And the recovery from the 2011 tsunami continues, even now, to be a great element shaping this town’s present.

Four hundred years ago, Date Masamune’s retainer Kawamura Magobei ordered the flow of the Kitakami River and opened a road by which inland rice could be carried by boat down to the river mouth. The rice that came down the river was here transferred to seagoing ships, and as much as two hundred thousand koku in good years was sent to Edo, and Ishinomaki flourished until it was counted among the two great commercial ports of Oshu. The memory of an early-modern commercial port that flourished by the carriage of domain rice, and the present of a central city of the Sanriku coast in the midst of recovery from the tsunami — the same river-mouth town holds those two faces at once. The memory of an early-modern commercial port that flourished by the carriage of domain rice, and the present in the midst of recovery from the tsunami, dwell at once in the same river-mouth town.