Tatebayashi-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about seventy-five thousand (75,309 in 2020). This city’s population, rather than a step from a large merger, struck a gentle peak at 79,371 in 2000 and 79,454 in 2005, and then, through 78,608 in 2010 and 76,667 in 2015 to 75,309 in 2020, has slowly fallen by a little over four thousand in twenty years. A town at the southeastern edge of the Kanto Plain has just turned from a level peak toward a gentle decline.

Looking inside the figures, a form typical of a city of the northern Kanto appears. The share aged 65 and over is 29.3% in 2020, nearing three in ten, and the household-with-children share is 20.2%. The Childcare Waitlist was zero in both 2024 and 2025. The Fiscal Capacity Index was 0.80 in fiscal 2023 — a level covering eight-tenths of expenditure with its own tax revenue, on the high side for a regional city. The castle town where flour milling began, while slowly losing population, keeps its fiscal stamina on the high side — that is what appears in the figures. Why it takes this form cannot be read without going back over the history of Tatebayashi Castle and flour milling.

Tatebayashi’s skeleton is set by the geography of the southeastern edge of the Kanto Plain and by a history that began with a castle town and took its form from flour milling. In the early modern era, Tatebayashi Castle was built in this land. Sakakibara Yasumasa, counted among the Four Heavenly Kings of the Tokugawa, laid out the castle town and made the moat surrounding the castle. As a key of the Kanto close to Edo, Tatebayashi began its course as a castle town. The start as an old castle town lies in this town’s old layer.

This town holds one more old face. Morin-ji temple is the temple held to be the stage of the old tale “Bunbuku Chagama,” known for the approach lined with statues of tanuki. Onto the gate of the castle town overlapped a place of a story handed down.

And in the modern era, a flour-milling industry was born in this town. In 1900, Shoda Teiichiro founded “Tatebayashi Flour Milling,” the predecessor of Nisshin Flour Milling, in this land. The location of a castle town that gathered the wheat of the Kanto Plain called in the modern industry of flour milling. Tatebayashi is the founding place of a flour-milling company representative of Japan. Beginning with a castle town, holding the temple gate town of an old tale, and with a flour-milling industry born — this town’s form stands upon the history of the castle town and flour milling that the geography of the southeastern edge of the Kanto Plain held.

What characterizes Tatebayashi-shi is that a town that began with a castle and took its form from flour milling, having passed its peak, slowly loses population. Taking the 79,454 of 2005 as one summit, it lost a little over four thousand by 2020. As a city of the northern Kanto tied to the city center by the Tobu Railway, the structure by which a town that gathered population after the war turns to decline amid the maturing of its residential areas and the falling birthrate can be read in these figures. That the share aged 65 and over nears three in ten is the obverse of that maturing too.

Even so, fiscal stamina holds on the high side. A Fiscal Capacity Index of 0.80 is a level covering eight-tenths of expenditure with its own tax revenue, on the high side for a regional city. The local industry beginning with flour milling, and the tax payments of residents commuting to the city center, can be read as lending thickness to the tax source. The Childcare Waitlist too was zero in both 2024 and 2025, and the receptacle against demand is held. The population has passed its peak, aging nears three in ten, and yet fiscal stamina is on the high side — these three numbers the castle town where flour milling began shows, read by taking out only one, have their shape mistaken.

The town called Tatebayashi has taken several functions into a single land. One is the history of the castle town of Tatebayashi Castle that Sakakibara Yasumasa laid out, holding an origin as a key of the Kanto close to Edo. Another is Morin-ji temple, held to be the stage of the old tale “Bunbuku Chagama,” keeping the face of a place of a story handed down at the gate of the castle town. And the history of being the founding place of Nisshin Flour Milling gives this town the distinctive story of a flour-milling industry that the wheat of the Kanto Plain called in.

From the castle town of Tatebayashi Castle, to the temple gate town of Bunbuku Chagama, and on to the place where flour milling began — the condition of “opening at the southeastern edge of the Kanto Plain, close to Edo” set the castle town, called the story, and called the flour milling. Because it was a place where the wheat of the Kanto Plain gathered, the modern flour-milling industry put down roots in this castle town. The three histories were not born separately, but lie on a single thread, sprouting in turn from the same geography.