Isesaki-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about two hundred and ten thousand (211,850 in 2020). This city’s population carries a large step from the merger. In 2005 Isesaki-shi was formed by the new merger of the old Isesaki-shi with Akabori town, Azuma village and Sakai town — one city, two towns and one village. Before the merger, the old Isesaki-shi alone was 125,751 in 2000; after the merger, with the four municipalities combined, it became 202,447 in 2005, and from there, through 207,221 in 2010 and 208,814 in 2015 to 211,850 in 2020, it has kept increasing even after the merger.

Looking inside the figures, it is young for a city of the northern Kanto. The share aged 65 and over stays at a quarter, 25.1% in 2020, and the household-with-children share is high at 23.4%. The Childcare Waitlist has been zero in recent years. The Fiscal Capacity Index was 0.81 in fiscal 2023 — a level covering about eight-tenths of expenditure with its own tax revenue, high for a regional city. The town that wove silk increases its population and keeps its youth and its fiscal stamina — that is what appears in the figures. Why it took this form cannot be seen without going back over the history of meisen and sericulture, and of the merger.

Isesaki’s skeleton is set by the geography of the plain of the Tone River basin. The place name “Isesaki” itself is said to derive from a part of this land being offered to Ise Jingu in the Warring States period and called “Ise no mae,” so that faith in Ise is inscribed in the town’s origin.

That plain became, in the modern era, a town of silk textiles. Isesaki was known as a producing district of “Isesaki meisen,” a silk textile representative of the northern Kanto. The sound of the looms weaving meisen, which spread throughout the country as an everyday silk, supported this town’s modern era. Behind it lay a thick base of sericulture and reeling, and the city’s former Tajima Yahei residence is listed, as a sericultural farmhouse building, among the component assets of “Tomioka Silk Mill and Related Sites.” It is the typical pattern, in economic geography, of a silk-producing district where everything from the raw-material sericulture to the weaving was agglomerated in a single region.

And in the present age, this town gained one more history. The 2005 merger. To the old Isesaki-shi were added one city, two towns and one village — including Sakai town, which flourished as a post town of the Nikko Reiheishi Kaido — and it became a city exceeding two hundred thousand. The town that wove silk, by way of the Heisei merger, changed its form into a core city of the northern Kanto. Beginning with an offering to Ise, becoming a town of silk textiles, and four municipalities becoming one. The foundation of the plain of the Tone River basin bore a place name that arose from faith, called in an agglomeration from sericulture to weaving, and later joined the surrounding towns and villages.

What characterizes Isesaki-shi is that, while many cities of the northern Kanto lose population, it has kept increasing its population even after the merger. From right after the merger in 2005 to 2020, the population rose by a little over nine thousand. Close to the prefecture’s core cities of Takasaki and Maebashi, and tied by railway and expressway toward the Tokyo direction, its location, together with the workplaces of manufacturing, can be read as having drawn in young households. That the share aged 65 and over stays at a quarter and the household-with-children share exceeds two in ten is the obverse of that inflow.

That vitality appears in the fiscal figures too. A Fiscal Capacity Index of 0.81 is a level covering about eight-tenths of expenditure with its own tax revenue, high for a regional city. The agglomeration of manufacturing and the increase of population can be read as lending thickness to the tax source. The Childcare Waitlist too has moved at zero in recent years. The town that wove silk now bears at once the increase of population, its youth, and high fiscal stamina. An increasing population, shallow aging, high finances. The course of this town, still increasing in a northern Kanto of continuing population decline, cannot be grasped by taking out any single number. Only by binding the three together does the town’s present come into view.

In Isesaki several faces the plain called in overlap. One is the history of a plain town whose place name derives from an offering to Ise Jingu, holding an origin that arose from faith. Another is the producing district of the silk textile Isesaki meisen, where everything from sericulture to weaving was agglomerated, keeping the memory of silk that holds a World Heritage component asset. And the 2005 merger gives this town the face of a core city of the northern Kanto exceeding two hundred thousand.

From a plain that arose from an offering to Ise, to a silk town that wove Isesaki meisen, to a core city in which four municipalities became one. The geography of opening onto the plain of the Tone River basin and being tied to the core cities and the Tokyo direction has called silk, industry and people alike to this plain. Whether one traces it as a meisen town that sent everyday silk throughout the country, or measures it as a workplace of manufacturing that still keeps gathering young households — depending on which one takes as the entrance, the same Isesaki shows an entirely different expression.