Ota-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about two hundred and twenty-three thousand (223,014 in 2020). But to read this figure, one premise must be held down. The sharp rise from 147,906 in 2000 to 213,299 in 2005 is not a natural population increase, but owes to the municipal area itself widening when it merged with three neighboring towns in 2005. From 2005 to 2020, after the merger, it turned to a gentle increase, from 213,299 to 223,014.

What I want to note here is that it keeps holding its population even after the merger. The share aged 65 and over rose from 17.1% (2005) to 26.0% (2020), but in the same span those under 15 stayed at a comparatively gentle decrease, from 32,576 to 29,597. The household-with-children share is high at 23.0% (2020), and the Fiscal Capacity Index was 0.94 in fiscal 2023. The Childcare Waitlist has moved at zero. The fiscal thickness typical of an industrial city, and a held number of children. Why it took this form cannot be seen without going back over the history of growing up together with a single enterprise.

Ota’s skeleton is inseparably bound to the course of one engineer and one company. In the Taisho era, Nakajima Chikuhei founded an aircraft research laboratory in his home district of Ojima town, Gunma Prefecture, in 1917, and within that same year moved it to Ota town. From here, an aircraft maker called the Nakajima Aircraft Company grew up with Ota as its base. Becoming the founding place of one company decided this town’s character.

After the war, the Nakajima Aircraft Company was renamed Fuji Sangyo, and after being split in 1950, it gathered again into a single company as Fuji Heavy Industries in 1953. This is today’s SUBARU. The technology and factories that made aircraft changed, after the war, into a company that makes automobiles, and Ota remained a town holding its central factory. The value of industrial-product shipments in 2020 was about 2.98 trillion yen, eleventh nationwide, of which transport machinery exceeded seventy percent. It is an agglomeration of the automobile industry centered on a single company. It is the typical pattern, in economic geography, of a company castle town, where a town is shaped around a specific large enterprise as its core.

And in March 2005, Ota-shi merged with the neighboring Ojima town, Nitta town and Yabuzuka-honmachi town to become the present Ota-shi. Ojima town, which had become the founding place of the Nakajima Aircraft Company, was at this time gathered into a single city as well. From an aircraft research laboratory that one engineer opened in his home district, to an agglomeration of the automobile industry, and on to an industrial city joining its neighbors. The single fact that Nakajima Chikuhei moved an aircraft research laboratory to his home district made this town one that grows up together with a single enterprise.

What characterizes Ota-shi is that, while increasing its population gently in the fifteen years after the merger, the decrease in the number of children settles at a comparatively small scale. It is consistent, too, with the high household-with-children share of 23.0%. The agglomeration of industry generates stable employment and can be read as holding back the working hands and their families. The elementary schools within the city became 27 after the merger, and in recent years have fallen to 25, but it is not a large collapse.

The Childcare Waitlist has moved at zero. This can be read not as the result of children thinning out as in a regional city of population decline, but as a zero reached by keeping supply catching up to demand while holding households with children. The level of a Fiscal Capacity Index of 0.94 too is the appearance of the tax revenue the transport-equipment industry generates supporting fiscal thickness. The industrial city with a single enterprise as its core holds back households with children by that employment, and comparatively holds the number of children and the fiscal thickness. Yet the aging rate has risen to twenty-six percent, and an industrial city too is not exempt from gentle aging. Employment, children and aging are not separate facts; they branch from the agglomeration of a single enterprise and advance at once upon the same town.

In Ota several faces born of the course of one company overlap. One is the agglomeration of the transport-equipment industry centered on automobiles, where the central factory of a company tracing back to the Nakajima Aircraft Company supports the town’s employment and finances. Another is the municipal area itself, widened by the 2005 merger, where the centers of the former towns — including the old Ojima town, which became the founding place of the Nakajima Aircraft Company — remain here and there within the municipal area.

From aircraft, to automobiles, and on to an industrial city by way of merger. This agglomeration of the automobile industry, generating shipments of 2.98 trillion yen, has, if one traces it back, at its starting point the home district of one engineer. Had Nakajima Chikuhei not moved an aircraft research laboratory to this land in 1917, neither SUBARU’s factory, nor the employment that holds back households with children, nor a population of two hundred and twenty thousand, would have been born. It was not the landform of the plain, but one person’s choice to move a laboratory to his home district, that called the town itself in.