Sakata-shi

In the most recent Population Census the population is about 100,000 (100,273 in 2020). What must be noted first is that the rise of some thirteen thousand from 98,278 in 2005 to 111,151 in 2010 was not the result of people naturally increasing. It came from the new merger of the former Sakata City and three towns of Akumi District in 2005, and the effect of the merger shows in the 2010 figure. The former Sakata City was about ninety-eight thousand, and by becoming one with the surrounding towns both the municipal area and the population widened.

Upon that, looking into the makeup after the merger, it fell by some eleven thousand over ten years, from 111,151 in 2010 to 100,273 in 2020. Those under 15 fell greatly, from 14,123 in 2010 after the merger to 10,305 in 2020, and the aging rate reached a high level approaching forty percent, from 22.1% in 2000 to 36.0% in 2020. Households with children were 19.5%, the childcare waitlist has been zero in recent years, and the Fiscal Capacity Index was 0.48 in FY2023. The figure of a port town that flourished by the Kitamaebune, now in deep shrinkage and aging after the merger, appears in the numbers. Why it takes this shape cannot be read without going back to the history of the Kitamaebune and the great merchants.

Sakata’s skeleton is set by the geography of the mouth of a river where the goods of the interior gather. The rice harvested in the interior of Dewa, and the safflower dye that in those days was compared even to gold, came down the river by the water transport of the Mogami River and were gathered at this port at its mouth. With the mountains and the interior at its back, the river carries wealth here — that is the foundation of this town.

What enlarged that wealth at a stroke was the sea route. In 1672, Kawamura Zuiken, on the orders of the shogunate, opened the western sea route, by which the rice of the shogunate’s direct holdings in Dewa was carried from Sakata by way of the Seto Inland Sea and Osaka to Edo. By this Sakata flourished as a port of call for the Kitamaebune, and the rice and safflower gathered at the river mouth were loaded onto ships and carried to the Kamigata region and Edo. The river’s water transport and the sea route joined at the river mouth, and Sakata became a hub of trade on the Sea of Japan.

That trade gave rise to great merchants in the town. The Honma family of great landholders in particular, with vast wealth behind them, became a presence of whom it was sung, “One cannot reach the Honma, but at least one would become a lord.” The Sankyo Warehouses standing on the bank of the Mogami River were built as a group of storehouses to keep rice, with a stand of zelkova trees at their back and a double roof devised to ward off damp. The present city was born in 2005 from the merger of the former Sakata City and three towns of Akumi District. Rice and safflower from the interior came down the river and were sent out to the Kamigata region by the sea route — at the knot of that trade great merchants were born, and later the surrounding towns were combined and the municipal area widened. The memory of wealth and the municipal area of the merger overlap at the mouth of the Mogami River.

What characterizes Sakata is that, while widening its municipal area through merger, within it a deep population decline and aging advance. In the ten years after the merger the total population fell by some eleven thousand, and those under 15 fell greatly as well. While holding the history of a port town on the Sea of Japan side, it is long since the trade of the Kitamaebune era was replaced by the railway and land logistics, and it now carries the outflow of the young generation and the thinning of births, with farming, fisheries and small-and-medium industry at its back. That the aging rate is thirty-six percent, approaching forty, places it on the high side even among the country’s cities.

The figures for living infrastructure are marked by the merger. The elementary schools were twenty-two in 2005 before the merger, but rose to thirty-one in 2006 after it, as the school networks of the combined towns were bound together. Afterward, in step with the falling number of children, consolidation advanced, and in 2023 they returned to the same twenty-two as before the merger. It is the form of a widened school network being folded up to match the number of children. The childcare waitlist has moved at zero in recent years. The port town that flourished by the Kitamaebune and gave rise to great merchants now carries, within a municipal area widened by merger, a deep shrinkage and high aging. The total population falls, the children fall greatly, and aging approaches forty percent. The long ebb, since the trade of the Kitamaebune was long ago replaced by the railway and land logistics, works on these numbers in the same direction.

The faces Sakata holds at its river mouth are not one. One is the geography of the river mouth where the water transport of the Mogami River and the western sea route of the Sea of Japan join, holding the history of having been a hub of trade where the goods of the interior gathered and were sent out to the sea. Another is the memory of the accumulation of wealth — the great merchant Honma family that this trade gave rise to, and the Sankyo Warehouses that guarded the rice. And its position as the northern center of the Shonai Plain gives this town, even now, the character of a base for the northwest of the prefecture.

Sakata is a town of the river mouth where river and sea meet in trade. From a place where the water transport of the Mogami River gathered, to a port of call on the western sea route, to a port town that gave rise to great merchants, and on to a city on the Sea of Japan side widened by merger — the geography that “the wealth of the interior came down the river and gathered at the river mouth, and was carried out by the sea route” drew to this river mouth the trade of the Kitamaebune and the great merchants it gave rise to. Precisely because the river’s water transport and the sea route joined here, the wealth of the interior gathered at a single point, and great merchants such as the Honma family were born.