Tsuruoka-shi

In the most recent Population Census the population is about 120,000 (122,347 in 2020). This city’s population has a step from a merger. In 2005 the former Tsuruoka City merged with Fujishima Town, Haguro Town, Kushibiki Town, Asahi Village and Atsumi Town to become the present municipal area. The figure of 100,628 for the former Tsuruoka City in 2000 became 142,384 in 2005 after combining the surrounding towns and villages, and from there it fell gently after the merger — through 136,623 in 2010 and 129,652 in 2015 to 122,347 in 2020.

Looking into the makeup, the figure of a castle town of the Shonai Plain appears. The share aged 65 and over rose from 22.3% in 2000 to 35.1% in 2020, well past three in ten. Households with children were 21.1% in 2020, and the childcare waitlist was zero in both 2024 and 2025. The Fiscal Capacity Index was 0.41 in FY2023 — its own tax revenue does not reach half of expenditure, and reliance on the allocation tax is large. The figure of a castle town of the Shonai domain that, after the merger, reduces its population and deepens its aging while holding the childcare waitlist at zero, appears in the numbers. Why it takes this shape cannot be read without going back to the history of the Shonai domain and the Matsugaoka reclamation.

Tsuruoka’s skeleton is set by the fertile land of the Shonai Plain and the history of the warrior class’s learning and reclamation placed upon it. The older layer is the castle town. In 1622, the Sakai family entered Shonai, and the Shonai domain that governed this land came into being. From then until the Meiji era the Sakai served as the domain’s lords, and Tsuruoka flourished as its castle town. In 1805 the domain school, the Chido-kan, was opened. The building of this domain school, set up to raise able people, remains today as the only surviving domain-school architecture in the Tohoku region.

And at the threshold of the modern era this town went through one transformation. After defeat in the Boshin War, the former Shonai domain sought the future of its warriors in reclamation. In the Matsugaoka reclamation beginning in 1872, about three thousand former retainers traded their swords for hoes, broke open the wild fields and raised an industry of raw silk — silk. It is recorded that in about two years more than three hundred hectares were opened. Warriors transformed into farming and crafts, and the castle town changed its form into a town of silk — an example, in the terms of economic geography, of how a transformation of society reorganized a region’s industry. The learning of the warrior class that remains in the domain school, and the silk raised by former retainers who traded their swords for hoes, lie folded one upon the other on the fertile land of the Shonai Plain.

What characterizes Tsuruoka is that, while carrying the history of being the center of the Shonai Plain, it reduces its population and deepens its aging after the merger. From 2005 after the merger to 2020, some twenty thousand were lost, and the share aged 65 and over rose to 35.1%. On the Shonai Plain — a land at a distance from the cities of the Sea of Japan side — within the flow of the young generation moving toward cities such as Sendai and the metropolitan area, it can be read that the population decline and the deepening of aging advance at the same time. In particular, it can be read that the surrounding towns and villages that merged in 2005 include districts where the population decline and aging show more strongly than in the city center.

On the other hand, households with children held at 21.1% in 2020, and the childcare waitlist moved at zero. It can be read as a sign that the farming of the Shonai Plain and, in recent years, the siting of research institutions have held a measure of young households in place. A Fiscal Capacity Index of 0.41 is a level where its own tax revenue does not reach even half of expenditure, and reliance on the allocation tax is large. It mirrors that, against the expenditure that supports a wide municipal area, the tax base is limited. The castle town of the Shonai domain is now, after the merger, reducing its population and deepening its aging, while holding the childcare waitlist at zero and supporting its finances with the allocation tax. The population falls, aging is well past three in ten, fiscal stamina is on the weak side, and yet the childcare waitlist holds at zero. The single condition of a location at a distance from the cities of the Sea of Japan side casts shadows in different directions across these numbers.

The layers Tsuruoka holds on the Shonai Plain are not one. One is the history of the castle town of the Shonai domain, which the Sakai family entered in 1622, holding an old stratum carved by warrior-class rule. Another is the Chido-kan of 1805, the only surviving domain-school building in the Tohoku region, which keeps the memory of the warrior class’s learning. And the history of the silk that former retainers raised in the Matsugaoka reclamation, trading their swords for hoes, gives this town the story of a transformation in which a defeated warrior class raised an industry. Further, this town has long held the face of a gateway town to the Three Mountains of Dewa.

Tsuruoka is a castle town marked by the learning of the warrior class and the reclamation of silk. From the castle town of the Shonai domain, to the land of learning at the Chido-kan, to the town of silk where swords were traded for hoes — the geography of “opening onto the fertile land of the Shonai Plain” drew to a single plain the Sakai family’s castle town, the learning of the Chido-kan, and the silk of Matsugaoka. The memory of warrior-class rule and the transformation in which a warrior class traded swords for hoes are here woven into one.