Mito-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 270,000 (270,685 in 2020). Over the five years from 270,783 in 2015, it held its ground almost flat. Set beside Yamagata City and Fukushima City, which have entered a phase of population decline, that it keeps almost flat is the first characteristic of this prefectural capital’s numbers.

Yet looking at the breakdown, the center of gravity of the generations is moving even behind the flatness. Those under 15 fell by about twelve hundred in five years, from 34,839 (2015) to 33,685 (2020). In the same span the share aged 65 and over rose from 24.5% to 26.2%. Even with the total flat, children gently decrease and the share of the elderly rises — the stability of the total population does not stop the lean in the generations. The household-with-children share is 20.1%. The land price of residential areas, at about 42,000 yen per m², is at a level even lower than Yamagata City or Fukushima City. The Fiscal Capacity Index is 0.79; below 1.0, but this is the standard figure of local finance, in which standard expenditure cannot be covered by its own tax revenue alone and the local allocation tax fills the gap, and is nothing unusual for a prefectural capital. The Childcare Waitlist is 1 in both 2024 and 2025. Not zero, but it can be read as a small number moving around the point where the supply and demand of a 270,000 city are nearly in balance. Why these numbers settled into this shape cannot be unraveled without going back over the history of the Three Houses and jofu.

Mito’s skeleton is the very history of a singular castle town of the Three Houses that went on with no lord in the home town. To speak first of the landform, Mito Castle was built on a plateau with the Naka River to the north and Lake Senba to the south. The easily defended terrain of a plateau wedged between river and lake became the ground on which the castle was placed.

The first foundation, the one that set this town’s rank, is the Three Houses. In 1609 Tokugawa Yorifusa, the eleventh son of Tokugawa Ieyasu, became lord of Mito in Hitachi Province at 250,000 koku, and the Mito Tokugawa Family was established. From 1625 to 1630 Yorifusa advanced the building of the castle and the castle town. One of the Three Houses, ranking with Owari and Kii, was thus placed here. The second foundation, the one that most deeply set this town’s character, is the system called jofu. The Mito Tokugawa Family did not perform sankin-kotai; the head of the house went on residing permanently in Edo as a “jofu daimyo.” That is, in the home castle town of Mito, the days passed with the lord absent. A castle town, yet without its lord — this made the foundation of this town’s living different from other castle towns.

The third foundation is learning. The second lord, Tokugawa Mitsukuni, began the compilation of the “Dai Nihon Shi,” and the learning centered on reverence for the emperor spread across the country in time as “Mitogaku.” And the ninth lord, Tokugawa Nariaki, opened the domain school Kodokan in 1841. This was a domain school of one of the largest scales in the country at the time. The next year, 1842, he opened Kairakuen as a place for the people of the domain to rest. The rank of the Three Houses, the living of jofu with no lord present, and the learning of the Kodokan and Mitogaku — here is the history that, lacking a lord in the castle town, made learning and thought the center of gravity of the town.

What characterizes Mito is that, while the total population holds its ground almost flat, only the number of children falls by about twelve hundred. Unlike prefectural capitals such as Yamagata City or Fukushima City where the total itself diminishes, Mito’s total population holds its ground. Even so, behind the surface stability of flatness, the layer of children quietly thins and the share of the elderly rises. That the total does not move and that the content of the generations does not move are separate stories.

The Childcare Waitlist is 1 in both 2024 and 2025. Not zero, but to read this as many does not fit the facts. A waitlist of 1 in a 270,000 city is a number swinging small around the point where supply and demand are nearly in balance, and is not greatly different, in the felt sense of living, from the zero of Yamagata City or Fukushima City. The household-with-children share is 20.1%, close to Yamagata City (21.0%) or Fukushima City (18.7%). Children gently decrease, the share of the elderly rises, and yet the total population holds its ground flat. In a prefectural capital where the gentle decline of children, the rise in the share of the elderly, and a total population holding its ground all advance at once, even the small number of a waitlist of 1 is not of a nature to have its merit pronounced by pulling that one out alone.

In Mito several faces of differing origin overlap. One is the face of a center where the whole prefecture’s administration gathers, as the prefectural capital of Ibaraki. Another is the domain school Kodokan, opened by the ninth lord Tokugawa Nariaki, which still keeps, as a historic site at the town’s center, the memory of a place of learning of one of the largest scales in the country. Further, Kairakuen, opened by the same Nariaki, spreads over the plateau overlooking Lake Senba, conveying in a single place the landform of the castle town and the history of a domain capital of learning, overlaid.

Mito began as a castle town of the Three Houses, yet under the jofu system, in which the lord resided permanently in Edo, it went on with the lord absent from the home town. Castle, jofu, Mitogaku, Kodokan, Kairakuen — within the single vessel of a plateau wedged between the Naka River and Lake Senba, faces differing by era are piled up. Lacking a lord in the castle town, this town shaped its own character with learning and thought, rather than warrior dignity, as its center of gravity. What was absent from the castle town instead made the town’s outline stand out. Mito is one of the few castle towns that defined itself by what it lacked.