Ashikaga-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about a hundred and forty-five thousand (144,746 in 2020). This city’s population, not a step from a large merger, has fallen gently — by a little over eighteen thousand over twenty years — from 163,140 in 2000, through 159,756 in 2005, 154,530 in 2010, 149,452 in 2015, to 144,746 in 2020. It is a curve of a town along the Watarase River shrinking gently.

Looking inside the figures, aging advances. The share aged 65 and over reaches 32.5% in 2020, passing three in ten. The household-with-children share, at 18.5%, is on the lower side, and the Childcare Waitlist has been zero in recent years. The Fiscal Capacity Index was 0.73 in fiscal 2023 — a level covering about seven-tenths of expenditure with its own tax revenue, higher than the middle for a regional city. The figure of a land of medieval learning and the warrior house, bearing population decline and aging while keeping its fiscal stamina, appears in the numbers. Why it took this shape does not come into view without going back over the history of the Ashikaga clan and the Ashikaga School.

Ashikaga’s skeleton is set by the medieval place name of the Ashikaga estate in Shimotsuke Province and by the geography of a plain along the Watarase River. In the late Heian era, the Ashikaga clan of the Seiwa-Genji line arose with this Ashikaga estate as its base. Its eighth head, Ashikaga Takauji, opened the Muromachi shogunate in the capital, and the Ashikaga shogunal house continued for fifteen generations, some two hundred and forty years. A single warrior house opened the realm’s shogunate bearing the name of this land — a typical case, as historical geography would put it, of a warrior house’s birthplace deciding a town’s origin.

In the land of that warrior house, the lamp of learning was lit. In the Muromachi period, Uesugi Norizane, the Kanto deputy, donated classics now counted as national treasures, invited a monk of Engaku-ji in Kamakura as the first head master, and restored the Ashikaga School. This place of learning, also said to be the oldest extant school, flourished in the sixteenth century to the point of gathering three thousand students, and its name was introduced even abroad by Francis Xavier. The birthplace of the warrior house was also a hall of learning.

And in the modern era, this town flourished as a land of the textiles of the northern Kanto. Backed by the water of the Watarase River and the base of sericulture, the textile industry sustained the town’s economy. The warrior house arose here, a school said to be the oldest gathered three thousand students, and it became a town of textiles. The medieval place name of the Ashikaga estate in Shimotsuke Province and the plain along the Watarase River became the foundation that gave birth to the warrior house, called learning, and raised textiles.

What characterizes Ashikaga-shi is that, even while bearing medieval famous sites known across the country, the population keeps decreasing gently. Over twenty years a little over eighteen thousand were lost, and the share aged 65 and over rose to 32.5%. The modern industry that flourished as a town of the textiles of the northern Kanto lowered its weight amid the structural change of textiles, and, in the flow of the younger generation leaving toward Tokyo and nearby cities, the descent of population and the advance of aging can be read as occurring at the same time. The lowness of the household-with-children share, at 18.5%, is the expression of this too.

Even so, the fiscal stamina holds in the middle range. A Fiscal Capacity Index of 0.73 is a level covering about seven-tenths of expenditure with its own tax revenue, on the higher side for a regional city. The remaining agglomeration of manufacturing can be read as lending a degree of thickness to the tax source. The Childcare Waitlist too has been zero in recent years, and the receiving capacity for a reduced number of children is kept. The land of medieval learning and the warrior house now bears population decline and aging while keeping its fiscal stamina. Decreasing population, advancing aging, and yet a kept middle-range finances — this combination can be read as the expression of the manufacturing that flourished as the textiles of the northern Kanto shrinking only at a pace slower than the descent of population and still leaving thickness in the tax source.

In Ashikaga several faces of differing origin overlap. One is the history of being the birthplace of the Ashikaga clan, based at the Ashikaga estate in Shimotsuke Province, holding the history of giving birth to the warrior house that opened the Muromachi shogunate. Another is the Ashikaga School, restored by Uesugi Norizane, keeping the memory of a hall of learning said to be the oldest extant, which gathered three thousand students. And the textile industry that flourished along the Watarase River gives this town the face of a modern industrial city.

From the birthplace of the Ashikaga clan, to the hall of learning of a school said to be the oldest, to a town of the textiles of the northern Kanto. Three faces of differing character coexist in a single town. Pressed to the root, the single fact that the warrior house arose from this medieval land of the Ashikaga estate in Shimotsuke Province and opened the realm’s shogunate is what drew the hall of learning here, raised the town of textiles, and still leaves a name known across the country.