Fukushima-shi

In the most recent Population Census the population is about 283,000 (282,693 in 2020). In the five years from 294,247 in 2015, it fell by some eleven thousand. Even as the prefectural seat of Fukushima Prefecture, the population has entered a phase of decline.

What to look at here is the way the number of children is falling. Those under 15 fell by some three thousand three hundred over five years, from 34,412 in 2015 to 31,136 in 2020. In the same period the share aged 65 and over rose from 27.3% to 29.8%. The total population falls, the children fall faster still, and the share of the elderly is about to reach three in ten — this town has entered a phase of population transition much like that of Yamagata City, the capital of the neighboring prefecture. The share of households with children is 18.7%. The residential land price is around ¥58,000 per m², a level close to Yamagata City. The Fiscal Capacity Index is 0.76, below 1.0. This is the standard form of local public finance, where its own tax revenue alone cannot cover standard expenditure and the local allocation tax supplements it, and is nothing unusual for a prefectural capital. The childcare waitlist is zero. Why such numbers take this shape cannot be read without going back to the history of the basin and of sericulture and the railway.

Fukushima’s skeleton is a prefectural capital set by the overlapping of a landform, the basin; an industry, sericulture; and an axis, the railway. To begin with the landform, the center of Fukushima City lies in the Shindatsu Basin — a basin of alluvial fans built up from sediment carried by rivers — through which the Abukuma River runs. This area was once called Sugime-go of the village of Shinobu, and it is recorded that around 1413, when Date Mochimune built Sugime Castle (Daibutsu Castle), this became the turning point by which here grew into a town.

The second foundation, and the one that made this town known across the whole country, is sericulture. The Shindatsu region has been known since the Edo era as the “Shindatsu silk industry zone,” and the silkworm eggs in particular — the eggs of the silkworm — were known across the whole country for their high quality. A concentration of industry around a local specialty product, in the terms of economic geography, was raised early here. What joined that concentration to the markets of the whole country was the third foundation, the railway. When the railway linking Tokyo and Fukushima opened in 1887, Fukushima became the center for the gathering and distributing of raw silk for the whole of Tohoku. That it was a town where silkworm eggs and raw silk gathered also shows in the placing, in 1899, of the Fukushima branch of the Bank of Japan — the first in Tohoku. At the intersection of the industry of sericulture and the axis of the railway, even finance gathered.

The fourth foundation, and the event that decided the present standing of a prefectural capital, is the establishment of the prefecture. In 1876, three prefectures — Wakamatsu Prefecture, the forerunner of the Aizu region; Fukushima Prefecture, the forerunner of the Nakadori; and Iwasaki Prefecture, the forerunner of the Hamadori — merged to establish the present Fukushima Prefecture. Its name and prefectural seat were taken from the town of Fukushima, which had become a node of Tohoku’s logistics through sericulture and the railway. A town was born in a basin, the sericulture raised there was carried throughout Tohoku by the railway, and the merger of three prefectures entrusted the prefectural seat to the town of Fukushima that had become the axis of that gathering and distribution — the landform and the local industry came first, and the prefectural capital was placed upon them afterward.

What characterizes Fukushima is that, while the total population falls by some eleven thousand, the number of children falls by some three thousand three hundred. As in neighboring Yamagata City, the way the children fall is faster than the way the total population falls. Behind the slow attrition of the total, the layer of the next generation thins faster than it. This is the inner shrinkage typical of a regional prefectural capital, the exact opposite of the rise in children in Chofu City.

On the other hand, the childcare waitlist is held at zero. But this too is different in meaning from a zero achieved by adding capacity amid a rise in children, as in Kawasaki or Urayasu. In a town where the absolute number of children itself falls, demand for childcare also shrinks, so supply more easily catches up to it. Even with the same “zero childcare waitlist,” the reading changes entirely depending on whether, behind it, the children are rising or falling — as written in the section on Yamagata City as well. The share of households with children is 18.7%, a little thinner than the 21.0% of Yamagata City in the same Tohoku. The children fall, the share of the elderly is about to reach three in ten, and yet the childcare waitlist is zero — in a prefectural capital where several such currents advance at the same time, taking out a single figure alone does not fix the meaning.

The faces Fukushima City holds within a single basin are not one. One is the face of the central place where the administration of the whole prefecture gathers, as the seat of Fukushima Prefecture established through the merger of three prefectures. Another is the fruit cultivation that makes use of the landform of the Shindatsu Basin — known as a producing region of fruit, peaches above all, it has been called the “Kingdom of Fruit.” Further, the history of being a gathering and distributing center where the sericulture from the Edo era and the railway of the Meiji era crossed leaves the town the character of a node of Tohoku’s logistics.

Fukushima began as a castle town in a basin, became known across the whole country for sericulture, became an axis of gathering and distribution through the railway, and took on the prefectural seat through the merger of three prefectures. The basin, the river, sericulture, the railway, fruit — within the single vessel of the Shindatsu Basin, faces that differ by age are layered one upon another. It did not become a prefectural capital because there was a castle; the foundation lay rather in the landform of a basin carved by the Abukuma River and in the local industry raised there. It did not become a prefectural capital because there was a castle. What lay at the foundation was the landform of the basin, and the local industry raised there.