Moka-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about seventy-eight thousand (78,190 in 2020). This city’s population carries a step from the incorporation merger. In 2009 Moka-shi incorporated the neighboring Ninomiya town to reach its present municipal area. The old Moka-shi was 64,648 in 2000 and 66,362 in 2005; with Ninomiya town added, it rose by about sixteen thousand to 82,289 in 2010. From there, through 79,539 in 2015 to 78,190 in 2020, it has fallen gently since the incorporation.

Looking inside the figures, a form typical of a small-to-mid city of the northern Kanto appears. The share aged 65 and over rose from 14.9% (2000) to 27.1% (2020), but among regional cities that is on the held-down side. The household-with-children share, at 24.7% (2020), is high, and the Childcare Waitlist was zero in both 2024 and 2025. The Fiscal Capacity Index was 0.83 in fiscal 2023 — a level covering a little over eight-tenths of expenditure with its own tax revenue, comparatively high for a small-to-mid city. The town of cotton and the Hotoku reforms, after the incorporation, holds its population while keeping its household-with-children share and its fiscal stamina on the high side — that is what appears in the figures. Why it took this form cannot be seen without going back over the history of the cotton and the reforms.

This town’s skeleton is set by the plain caught between two rivers, by the cotton that grew there, and by the reforms that sought to set the people’s livelihoods back on their feet. The old layer is cotton. In the Edo era, the cotton woven in this land was called “Moka cotton,” and for its fine quality it became a specialty known by name throughout the country. The plain caught between the two rivers of the Kinugawa and the Kokai suited the cultivation of cotton, the raw material of the textile, and a weaving that drew on the rivers’ water grew up here.

And this land holds one more history. In the Edo era, this whole area passed from a daimyo’s domain to the shogunate’s directly governed land, and a magistrate’s office was set there for its governance. In the latter part of the Edo era, a man entrusted by the lord of a certain domain with reviving the villages of this land, which had fallen into ruin and exhaustion, came to a nearby village. He preached his own reforms, built on the pillars of diligence, frugality, and a spirit of mutual aid, and over more than twenty years sought to set the livelihoods of the surrounding villages back on their feet. These reforms later spread to various places under the name “Hotoku.” A cotton known nationwide, and reforms that sought to revive ruined villages. The plain caught between the two rivers of the Kinugawa and the Kokai grew the cotton, and both its abundance and its exhaustion drew the textile and the Hotoku reforms to this land.

What characterizes Moka-shi is that, while bearing the history of a cotton known nationwide and of the Hotoku reforms, it holds its population without large collapse after incorporating a neighboring town. From 82,289 in 2010, with Ninomiya town added, to 78,190 in 2020, the loss over ten years stays at about four thousand. In this town, set on a plain of the northern Kanto, the workplaces of manufacturing gathered in its industrial estates have sustained the population. The agglomeration of industry rooted in the land, together with the ease of commuting to nearby cities, can be read as having held the population without large collapse. That the share aged 65 and over is 27.1% in 2020, held down for a regional city, is its expression too.

On the other hand, the household-with-children share is high at 24.7% in 2020, and the Childcare Waitlist was zero in both 2024 and 2025. That the agglomeration of workplaces has held a certain number of young households in place can be read here. A Fiscal Capacity Index of 0.83 is a level covering a little over eight-tenths of expenditure with its own tax revenue, comparatively high for a small-to-mid city. The establishments gathered in the industrial estates can be read as lending thickness to the tax source. The town of cotton and the Hotoku reforms now, after the incorporation, holds its population while keeping its household-with-children share and its fiscal stamina on the high side. A population nearly held, held-down aging, comparatively high finances — that these three align can be read as the expression of how the manufacturing gathered in the industrial estates makes workplaces and a tax source and, together with the ease of commuting to nearby cities, has held a certain number of young households in place.

In Moka several faces the plain raised overlap. One is the history of Moka cotton, grown on the plain caught between two rivers and known by name throughout the country, holding the old layer of a textile rooted in the land. Another is the character of a land where, as a directly governed land of the shogunate, a magistrate’s office was set, and a man entrusted with reviving the ruined villages preached the Hotoku reforms — a land that keeps the history of seeking to set the people’s livelihoods back on their feet. And, on a railway that carried on a line of the former national railway, a steam locomotive runs chiefly on holidays — a distinctive structure that conveys the memory of cotton and railway.

From the cotton of the plain caught between two rivers, to the magistrate’s office of a directly governed land, and on to the land where the Hotoku reforms were preached. The Kinugawa and the Kokai grew the cotton, and both its abundance and its exhaustion called the textile and the reforms to this land. On a holiday morning, a black steam locomotive runs through, trailing smoke along the tracks inherited from the former national railway — across the plain where cargo once laden with cotton came and went, now a single soot-stained carriage crosses slowly, leaving behind the sound of its whistle.