Shibukawa-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about seventy-five thousand (74,581 in 2020). This city’s population carries a large step from the merger. Shibukawa-shi was born in 2006 from the new merger of the old Shibukawa-shi with Ikaho town, Onogami village, Komochi village, Akagi village and Kitatachibana village — one city, one town and four villages. The old Shibukawa-shi alone was 47,961 in 2005 before the merger; after the merger, in 2010, with the six municipalities combined, it became 83,330. Seen from after the merger, from 83,330 in 2010, through 78,391 in 2015 to 74,581 in 2020, it has fallen by about nine thousand in ten years.

Looking inside the figures, aging is deep. The share aged 65 and over reaches 35.2% in 2020. The household-with-children share is 18.8%, and the Childcare Waitlist has been zero in recent years. The Fiscal Capacity Index was 0.57 in fiscal 2023, on the side covering a little under six-tenths of expenditure with its own tax revenue. The figure of a post-station-and-hot-spring town bearing population decline and deep aging appears in the numbers. Why it takes this form cannot be read without going back over the history of the Mikuni Kaido and Ikaho Onsen.

Shibukawa’s skeleton is set by the geography of the northern rim of the Kanto Plain, near the center of Gunma. This town is said to be at the center of a circle joining Cape Soya, the northernmost point of Hokkaido, one of Japan’s four main islands, with Cape Sata, the southernmost point in Kagoshima. In 1984 a declaration flying the banner of “the middle of Japan, the navel town” was made with the chamber of commerce and industry at its center. The geographic positioning as “the middle” forms the town’s self-image.

That geographic advantage of “the middle” appeared, in the early modern era, as a post station of a highway. Shibukawa is the land where a post station of the Mikuni Kaido, joining Echigo and the Kanto, was placed — a key point of transport where people and goods came and went. And upon this context of the highway, the hot spring overlaps. On the high ground just above wells up Ikaho Onsen, one of the foremost hot-spring grounds of the Kanto, long famed as a place of recreation for the people around Tokyo. Specialties such as Mizusawa udon grew up in this place of tourism too.

Entering the modern era, this town flourished with industry, agriculture and tourism as its main industries. And in 2006, the old Shibukawa-shi merged with the surrounding one town and four villages to reach the present municipal area. Beginning with a land that flies the banner of the middle of Japan, becoming a post station of the Mikuni Kaido, holding Ikaho Onsen, and six municipalities becoming one — this town’s form stands upon the history of highway and hot spring.

What characterizes Shibukawa-shi is that a population that swelled greatly by merger has thereafter declined straight down. Over the ten years from 2010 to 2020, it lost about nine thousand, and the aging rate rose to 35.2%. While holding a location near the center of Gunma and a history of highway and hot spring, amid the falling weight of agriculture and the flow of a young generation leaving for the prefecture’s cities such as Takasaki and Maebashi or for the metropolitan sphere, the population’s downward course and the deepening of aging can be read as advancing at once.

Even so, the core of tourism supports the town’s economy. Ikaho Onsen, among the foremost of the Kanto, keeps gathering the waves of recreation from around Tokyo, and the middling stamina of a Fiscal Capacity Index of 0.57 can be read as owing in part to this thickness of tourism. The Childcare Waitlist too is zero in recent years, and the receptacle for child-rearing is held. The population decreases, aging deepens, and yet the bustle as a hot-spring town continues — in this town of central Gunma, two faces coexist: a shrinking sphere of life and a continuing place of tourism. Looking only at the graph of decline, the stone-step street bustling with recreation visitors does not come into view.

The town called Shibukawa stands by overlapping several faces. One is the positioning as “the middle of Japan,” said to be at the center of a circle joining Cape Soya and Cape Sata, holding the core of a self-image that flies the banner of the navel town. Another is the history of a post station of the Mikuni Kaido joining Echigo and the Kanto, keeping the memory of a key point of transport where people and goods came and went. And Ikaho Onsen, among the foremost of the Kanto, gives this town the face of a place of recreation.

From a land that flies the banner of the middle of Japan, to a post station of the Mikuni Kaido, to a place of recreation holding Ikaho Onsen, and on to a city in which six municipalities became one — the condition of “lying near the center of Gunma, where highway and hot spring overlap” called in the post station and the recreation in turn. The geographic “middle” brought the advantage of the highway, and on the high ground along that highway a hot spring welled up. Position called the highway, and the highway pushed the hot spring up into a place of tourism — a chain in which one geographic advantage brings the next assembled the town called Shibukawa.