Takasaki-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 373,000 (372,973 in 2020). Over the five years from 370,884 in 2015, it rose by a little over two thousand. While the neighboring Maebashi-shi (10201), the prefectural capital, loses population, Takasaki holds the prefecture’s largest scale and is a Core City still increasing gently.

What I want to note here is that, while keeping its growth, aging too is steadily advancing. The share aged 65 and over rose from 26.3% (2015) to 28.2% (2020), and those under 15 fell by over three thousand, from 49,298 to 46,009. The household-with-children share is 20.8% (2020). Behind a slight increase in the total population, its inside shifts its center of gravity to the high-age side. The land price of residential areas is about 40,000 yen per m² (40,200 yen, 2026), the lowest level among the three cities laid out this time. The Fiscal Capacity Index is 0.81 (2023), in a structure where the part not reaching 1.0 is supplemented by the local allocation tax for standard expenditure. The Childcare Waitlist is 0 (2025). Why these numbers took this form cannot be seen without going back over the history of post station, railway, and Shinkansen.

Takasaki’s skeleton is a layering of functions piled onto the one point of a junction where highway and railway cross. In the early modern era this town opened as a post station of the Nakasendo — Takasaki-juku. Among the many mountainous post stations of the Nakasendo, Takasaki-juku was sited on flatland and flourished as a post station where, besides the Nakasendo, the Reiheishi Kaido and the Hokkoku Kaido and others joined. The geographic condition of several highways crossing at one point was the very foundation that raised this town into a commercial city.

The second foundation is the railway. To Takasaki, a junction where people and goods gathered by highway, came in the railway age multiple lines beginning with the Takasaki Line and the Joetsu Line, and in time it became one of the foremost terminal stations of the northern Kanto, served by nine lines. The typical pattern, in economic geography, by which a junction of transport grows a city was repeated, the medium changing from highway to railway.

The third foundation is the Shinkansen. In 1982 the Joetsu Shinkansen, and in 1997 the Hokuriku Shinkansen (then the Takasaki–Nagano section), opened, and Takasaki Station became the branching point where the Joetsu and the Hokuriku Shinkansen part. The two Shinkansen lines part at a point about 3.3 kilometers from Takasaki Station. North toward the Niigata direction, west toward the Nagano and Hokuriku direction — this town, which is not the prefectural capital, came to bear the function of branching two trunk lines. From a post station of the Nakasendo, to a railway terminal, and on to the branching point of the Shinkansen. The geographic condition of several highways crossing at one point, changing its medium from highway to railway and railway to Shinkansen, has repeatedly called back the same function of a junction.

What characterizes Takasaki-shi is that, though it is not the prefectural capital, its population increased by two thousand, and yet the absolute number of children fell by three thousand. Those under 15 fell from 49,298 to 46,009, and the share aged 65 and over passed twenty-eight percent. Behind a gently increasing total population, its inside surely moves to the high-age side.

The Childcare Waitlist is 0. But this zero reads more coherently as the result of supply catching up to demand, where the household-with-children share of 20.8% is the lowest demand among the three cities this time and the absolute number of children too is decreasing. Insofar as administrative and educational-cultural functions are split off to the neighboring prefectural capital of Maebashi, Takasaki’s character as a junction of commerce and transport is strong. While a centripetal force — the branching point of the Shinkansen — supports the population’s growth, the number of children itself thins as in cities across the country; these two flows advance at once within a single town. Behind the single phrase “zero waitlist,” unless one sees whether children are increasing or thinning, whether that figure points to “room to spare” or to “contraction” cannot be read.

In Takasaki-shi several faces born of the one condition of a junction overlap. One is the history of a commercial city that opened as a flatland post station where the Reiheishi Kaido, the Hokkoku Kaido and others joined the Nakasendo — a character as a junction continuing from the highway age. Another is one of the foremost terminal stations of the northern Kanto, served by nine lines and the branching of both the Joetsu and the Hokuriku Shinkansen, which carried the character of a highway junction into the railway and Shinkansen age. Further, within the city is Shorinzan Daruma-ji temple, which began when an image of Bodhidharma was enshrined in 1680 and is known as the birthplace of the engi-daruma, the stage of the “Takasaki Daruma Market.”

Takasaki is not the prefectural capital of Gunma, yet it holds the prefecture’s largest-scale population. From a post station of the Nakasendo, to a railway terminal, and on to the junction where two Shinkansen lines branch. The condition of a flatland where highways join has, changing its medium through highway, railway and Shinkansen, repeated the same function of a junction. Takasaki is a city whose true identity is the junction itself — one that, without holding the prefectural government, has remained the prefecture’s largest town on the geographic advantage of being where several roads meet.