Akita-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 308,000 (307,672 in 2020). From 315,814 in 2015 it fell, over five years, by more than eight thousand. It is a prefectural capital that holds three hundred thousand even as it enters a phase of decline.

Look at the content, and the pace of aging draws the eye. The share aged 65 and over rose from 28.1% (2015) to 31.2% (2020), passing three-tenths. Those under 15 fell from 34,916 (2015) to 32,809 (2020), more than two thousand fewer in five years. The share of households with children was 18.2% (2020). Residential land prices run around ¥38,000 per m², a level on the lower side among the prefectural capitals of northern Tohoku. The Fiscal Capacity Index is 0.65, not reaching 1.0 — a structure common to regional cities that support a standard level of expenditure through the local allocation tax, and not a matter of better or worse. The Childcare Waitlist was 0 (2025), but what I want to note here is that this zero arises at the same time as a decline in the absolute number of children. Why these numbers take this shape cannot be read without going back to the history of the Kubota castle town and the port of the Kitamaebune trade.

Akita’s frame is made of two cores: a castle town newly laid out by a feudal lord moved here from a distant land, and a port town at a river mouth.

After the Battle of Sekigahara, the distinguished Satake house, which had wielded great power in Hitachi (present-day Ibaraki), was transferred by the Tokugawa shogunate to Akita. Satake Yoshinobu built a new castle on Shinmeizan (present-day Senshu Park) and laid out a castle town. This Kubota castle town, set in order in 1604, is the prototype of today’s city center. The castle has a distinctive feature. Unusually for a castle of the time, it made almost no use of stone walls; its defense rested mainly on moats and earthen ramparts, and no keep was built. A lord moved to a distant province as an "outside" daimyo, because he had not actively sided with the Eastern army at Sekigahara, can be read as having raised a restrained castle out of deference to the shogunate — the very form of the castle mirrors the position in which this house was placed. In the terms of historical geography, it is an instance of the artificial transplanting of a castle town through a daimyo’s transfer.

The other core is the port. Tsuchizaki, set at the mouth of the Omono River away from the castle town, flourished as a port of call for the Kitamaebune (the coasting ships that circled the Sea of Japan). The castle town of Kubota and the river-mouth port town of Tsuchizaki — the seat of administration and the gateway of distribution — stood side by side, joined by the river. Entering the modern era, in 1889 Akita became Akita City as one of the first thirty-one places in Japan to adopt municipal status. In 1997 it was, moreover, the first in Tohoku to be designated a Core City. The history by which the castle town built by a transferred house, and the port of the Kitamaebune, passed their roles on to a prefectural capital and then to a Core City, decides the frame of today’s city.

In Akita’s numbers, what most needs care in its reading is the Childcare Waitlist of zero (2025) in a city where the aging rate has passed three-tenths. The share aged 65 and over reaches 31.2%, the highest among the three cities. At the same time, those under 15 fell by more than two thousand in five years. In a phase where the very number of children who would enter care is thinning, places in childcare become more able to keep up with demand. A Childcare Waitlist of zero here cannot be read the same as the achievement of cities outside Aomori Prefecture, where supply was made to keep up while children were increasing.

The same "Childcare Waitlist of zero" carries wholly different circumstances behind it in a city where aging has passed three-tenths and children are falling, and in a city where children are increasing. In Akita’s case the share of the elderly is the highest of the three cities, and this zero is set within a flow where both the total population and the number of children are falling. The share of households with children is 18.2%, slightly thicker than Aomori but not reaching Morioka. Looking only at the surface of the numbers, one would like to read "a child-friendly city with no childcare waitlist," but beneath it the population dynamics are quietly advancing. This number, too, will be misread if it is not read together with its background.

The functions Akita-shi holds within a single city area are not one. One is the castle-town townscape centered on the remains of Kubota Castle (present-day Senshu Park) built by the Satake house, where the form of a castle without stone walls conveys this house’s history. Another is Tsuchizaki Port at the mouth of the Omono River, where the gateway of distribution that flourished as a port of call for the Kitamaebune still remains as a harbor. Further, it holds at once the administrative function of being the capital of Akita Prefecture and the standing of the first Core City in Tohoku, to which it shifted in 1997.

Akita began from a structure in which two cores — the castle town of Kubota and the river-mouth port of Tsuchizaki — stood side by side, joined by the river. From castle town to prefectural capital to Core City, the condition of "a place where the seat of administration and the gateway of the port stand side by side" has carried different functions in each age. The castle, the port, the prefectural offices — trace them back, and they arrive at one condition: a site that looks out on the Omono River and the Sea of Japan. This location, facing river and sea, has taken on, one after another, a different role in each age.