Hitachi-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 175,000 (174,508 in 2020). It peaked at 199,218 in 2005, and by 2020 had fallen by roughly twenty-five thousand, in a trend of shrinking consistently since 2000.

What first draws the eye here is the way the number of children is thinning. Those under 15 fell by nearly four-tenths over twenty years, from 28,851 (2000) to 17,585 (2020). The share aged 65 and over rose in the same span from 16.5% to 32.4%, far exceeding three in ten. The household-with-children share is low, at 17.3%. Elementary schools have gently decreased, from 24–27 schools in the 2000s to around 25 in recent years. The Childcare Waitlist has been zero in recent years, and the Fiscal Capacity Index was 0.77 in fiscal 2023. Even while holding a large firm, both the population and the children decrease steadily, and the town quietly grows older. Why that is so does not show its thread without returning to the history of the mine and electrical machinery.

Hitachi’s skeleton is set by a single mine and a single company born from it. In 1905, Kuhara Fusanosuke bought the then nearly abandoned Akazawa copper mine, renamed it the Hitachi Mine, and rebuilt its management. New technology and capital were poured in, and in a short period the Hitachi Mine grew to be counted among the leading copper mines in the country. Digging copper from the mountain — this was this town’s starting point.

From within that mine, a company that would spread the town’s name across the world was born. In 1910 Odaira Namihei, who had handled the repair and manufacture of electric machinery at the mine, became independent from the Hitachi Mine and founded Hitachi, Ltd., to make sure of the technology of building electric machinery within the country. Its first product, a domestically made five-horsepower motor, was later designated an Important Cultural Property. With the copper the mine dug as its ground, an electrical company rose up alongside it — this order set the town’s character.

In time the electrical company, rather than the mine, became the town’s center. As Hitachi, Ltd. widened its scale, Hitachi changed its figure from a mining-and-industrial city to a full industrial city, and increased its population as a company town where the firm’s employees and their families lived. In 1914 a great smokestack, then said to be the tallest in the world, was built to cope with the smoke damage from the mine. In 1985 the population reached 200,000. Beginning with a copper mine on the verge of abandonment, an electrical company was born from it, and the town swelled with that company. The mine and electrical machinery — these two have set the town’s name and its population alike.

What characterizes Hitachi-shi is that, even while holding a large firm, both the population and the number of children decrease steadily. Those under 15 fell by nearly four-tenths over twenty years, and the household-with-children share, at 17.3%, is low even among cities of the same scale. This can be read as an expression of how a town that swelled with a single firm as a company town has come to bear the outflow of the younger generation and a falling birth rate amid the changing environment surrounding manufacturing. A structure where town and firm grew as one is also a structure where the firm’s course mirrors directly in the town’s population.

The figures of living infrastructure mirror this quiet shrinking too. Elementary schools have slowly decreased, from 24–27 in the 2000s to around 25 in recent years, in step with the decline of children. Not an abrupt consolidation, but a gentle adjustment in step with the thinning number of children. The Childcare Waitlist has held at zero in recent years. But this is less the result of fully meeting demand than, strongly, the aspect of the absolute number of children falling greatly and a margin opening within capacity. The town that swelled with an electrical company born from a copper mine on the verge of abandonment now quietly grows older with the firm. The population turns to decline, children fall greatly, and aging exceeds three in ten. The present of a company town where the three advance at once is not something to be spoken of by pulling out any single number. Only where the three are laid over one another does the town’s present come into view.

In Hitachi several faces overlap that, traced to their source, connect in a single line. One is the character of a company town centered on Hitachi, Ltd., where the firm’s factories and the town of the households that work and live there run along the long, narrow plain wedged between the Pacific and the highlands. Another is the mining history beginning with the Hitachi Mine; the great smokestack, built to cope with smoke damage, is still handed down in story as a symbol of the town. And it holds the rare, unified relationship — uncommon across the country — in which the company’s name is also the town’s name.

From a copper mine on the verge of abandonment, to the electrical company born there, and on to the industrial city that swelled with that company. Trace it back, and at the starting point of this industrial city of a hundred-and-several-ten-thousand people lies a single copper mine that had nearly been cast off. Had one man not bought it, neither the electrical company nor this town that bears the company’s name would have been born. The hands of two men, Kuhara Fusanosuke and Odaira Namihei, set the town itself upon the ore vein and the plain.