Aizuwakamatsu-shi

In the most recent Population Census the population is about 117,000 (117,376 in 2020). This town’s population swelled once from 118,118 in 2000 to 126,220 in 2010, and from that point turned to decline toward 2020. It is not that a step was made by a large merger, but a curve typical of a regional core city that began to shrink after crossing a peak.

Looking into the makeup, the fall in children is clear. Those under 15 fell by some five thousand five hundred over twenty years, nearly thirty percent, from 19,291 in 2000 to 13,716 in 2020. The share aged 65 and over rose from 19.6% in 2000 to 30.9% in 2020, past three in ten. Households with children were 20.0% (2020), the childcare waitlist has been zero in recent years, and the Fiscal Capacity Index was 0.62 in FY2023. The figure of a castle town in a basin that, having crossed a peak, quietly grows older appears in the numbers. Why it takes this shape cannot be read without going back to the history of the castle and the siege.

Aizuwakamatsu’s skeleton is decided by a single castle set at the center of the basin. Trace the castle to its origin, and it is said to have begun around the Nanboku-cho era when the Ashina family built a residence on this land. The one who greatly changed its character was Gamo Ujisato, who entered this land in 1590. Ujisato changed the place, until then called “Kurokawa,” to “Wakamatsu,” laid out the castle town in a grid, raised a seven-tiered keep and named it “Tsuruga-jo.” Aizuwakamatsu as a castle town begins from this design of Ujisato’s.

After that, by way of the era of Uesugi Kagekatsu, Hoshina Masayuki entered this castle in 1643. Masayuki was a figure deeply connected to the Tokugawa shogunal house, and from then this castle became the seat of the Aizu-Matsudaira family, continuing until the end of the shogunate, for more than two hundred years, as the core of the Aizu domain, which held loyalty to the Tokugawa house as its principle. The castle town in the basin walked on as the seat of a domain whose ties to the shogunate were strong even within Tohoku.

That strength of the tie greatly moved the fate of the town. In the Boshin War of 1868, Aizu fought fiercely against the new government’s army, and Tsuruga-jo withstood a siege of about one month. But, with no prospect of reinforcement, it continued to be exposed to bombardment, and at last it opened the castle. The castle was torn down in the Meiji era, leaving its stone walls, and the present keep was reconstructed in 1965 with many donations. With a single castle set at the center of the basin as its core, Gamo Ujisato’s grid layout and the memory of the siege that the tie to the shogunate brought are layered one upon another.

What characterizes Aizuwakamatsu is that, after crossing the population peak in 2010, the fall in children and the aging advance at the same time. That the mountain of the total population rises once high and then begins to descend looks like the process by which a core city that has gathered people from its surroundings within a basin loses the momentum of that gathering. On the other hand, those under 15 fell by nearly thirty percent over twenty years, and the aging rate passed three in ten. While the town’s headcount descends from its summit, within it the generations turn over faster still.

The figures for living infrastructure also mirror this change. The elementary schools rose from sixteen to twenty-two in the mid-2000s, then in step with the falling number of children returned in recent years to around nineteen. It is the form of a once-widened school network gently folded up to match the number of children. The childcare waitlist has moved at zero in recent years, but this includes the aspect of supply and demand balancing amid a fall in the absolute number of children. The town that Gamo Ujisato laid out in a grid, that flourished as the seat of the Aizu domain and that passed through the fires of the Boshin War, is now in a quiet shrinkage having crossed its peak. The total population crosses the mountain and falls, the children thin fast, and aging passes three in ten. A core city that gathered people from its surroundings within a basin loses that pull — one transformation appears in the same direction in the population, the ages and the school network alike.

The layers Aizuwakamatsu holds in the basin are not one. One is the history of the castle town that Gamo Ujisato laid out in a grid, and the skeleton of the present built-up area carries on this early-modern design. Another is the character of being the core of the Aizu domain, which deepened its ties to the shogunate as the seat of the Aizu-Matsudaira family — and that connected directly to the fate of the fierce battle of the Boshin War. And the landform of a basin has given this town the role of a core that gathers people and goods from the surrounding villages.

Aizuwakamatsu is a town that is the seat of a basin and holds the memory of a siege. From the residence of the Ashina, to Gamo Ujisato’s Tsuruga-jo, to the seat of the Aizu domain, to the siege of the Boshin War, and on to a regional core city holding a reconstructed keep — the history that “a castle was set at the center of a basin, and the tie to the shogunate decided its fate” drew to this basin the grid layout and the seat of the Aizu domain. That a castle was set decided the form of the town and the fate of the fires of the late shogunate alike, all at once.