Kashima-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about sixty-seven thousand (66,950 in 2020). Over twenty years this city’s population rose — from 62,287 in 2000, through 64,435 in 2005, 66,093 in 2010, to 67,879 in 2015 — and, at 66,950 in 2020, has just turned from increase to flat. In twenty years over which many regional cities have lost population, it is a rare curve, having increased and then held.

Looking inside the figures, the figure of a coastal-industry town appears. The share aged 65 and over, at 31.0% in 2020, exceeds three in ten, and the household-with-children share is 20.3%. The Childcare Waitlist was zero in both 2024 and 2025. And the Fiscal Capacity Index was 0.97 in fiscal 2023 — a markedly high level for a regional city, covering most of expenditure with its own tax revenue. The town of the shrine and the steelworks holds its population and covers nearly all of its expenditure with its own tax revenue. The reason does not come into view without going back over the history of the shrine and the Kashima development.

Kashima’s skeleton is set by the geography of a land facing the Pacific and by two layers laid down since antiquity. The old layer is the shrine. Kashima Jingu Shrine, enshrining the great god Takemikazuchi, is the ichinomiya of Hitachi Province, and is counted, with Katori Jingu in Chiba and Ikisu Shrine in Kamisu, as one of the Three Shrines of the Eastern Provinces. As the foremost ancient shrine of the eastern provinces, drawing from old the reverence of the warrior governments as a god of war, its precinct gate remained a land where people and goods gathered. In antiquity this land was a center of faith.

The new layer is postwar industry. In the 1950s and 1960s the Kashima development was carried forward on this land. Digging a sandy coast on a large scale to make an artificial harbor, and forming a coastal industrial zone around it — a development of national scale advanced right beside the shrine’s precinct gate. Then in 1968 the Sumitomo Metal Kashima Steelworks began operation. A vast industrial zone with steel and petrochemicals at its core was born on the Pacific coast. In economic geography it is a typical case of the postwar coastal development that agglomerates heavy and chemical industry, starting from a dug-in harbor.

Upon these two layers the present city stands. In 1995 Kashima town incorporated Ono village and enacted city status. Because a “Kashima City” written with the usual characters already existed in Saga Prefecture, to avoid duplication a variant character was used, and it became Kashima City written with that variant. Beginning at the shrine’s precinct gate, the steelworks came by digging into the sea, and it became a city. This land facing the Pacific has piled up, on the same shore, two layers separated in time: ancient faith and postwar heavy-and-chemical industry.

What characterizes Kashima-shi is that the tax source the postwar coastal industry brought strongly sustains the population and the finances. In twenty years over which many regional cities lost population, this town increased its population until 2015 and thereafter held it around sixty-seven thousand. The steel and petrochemical industry born of the Kashima development can be read as having made places of work and drawn people in. That the share aged 65 and over exceeds three in ten is also the obverse of the generation that moved in at the time of the development, half a century on, entering old age.

That thickness of industry shows markedly in the fiscal figures. A Fiscal Capacity Index of 0.97 is a level covering most of expenditure with its own tax revenue, outstandingly high for a regional city. It can be read as the expression of the fixed-asset tax and corporate tax revenue that the vast coastal industrial zone brings, lending thickness to the city’s finances. Regional cities that can cover expenditure with hardly any reliance on the allocation tax are by no means many. In the household-with-children share of 20.3% and the zero waitlist too is seen the stability that the workplaces of industry sustain. The town of the shrine and the steelworks now holds its population and covers most of its finances from its own industrial tax source. Holding its population, with aging past three in ten, and yet markedly high finances — this combination mirrors at once both the thickness of the tax source that the postwar coastal development brought to this shore, and the generation that moved in at the time of the development now entering old age.

In Kashima two layers a thousand years apart overlap. One is the history of the precinct gate of Kashima Jingu Shrine, enshrining the great god Takemikazuchi and counted among the Three Shrines of the Eastern Provinces, holding the old layer of having been, in antiquity, the center of this land’s faith. Another is the dug-in harbor and coastal industrial zone born of the Kashima development, keeping the new layer of a postwar agglomeration of heavy and chemical industry. And the face of being the home base of the Kashima Antlers adds to this town the memory of a football club born from the steel firm.

From the precinct gate of a shrine enshrining the god of war, to a steelworks town dug into the sea. Trace back the vast coastal industrial zone that sustains the fiscal capacity of 0.97, and at its starting point lies a sandy coast. Had that sandy coast not, after the war, been dug into on a large scale to make an artificial harbor, neither the steelworks nor these finances that cover expenditure with their own revenue would have been born. Right beside the precinct gate of a thousand-year shrine, the single move of digging the sea made the town’s present.