Kumagaya-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about a hundred and ninety-four thousand (194,415 in 2020). What I want to note first of all here is that the sharp rise of thirty-five thousand, from 156,216 in 2000 to 191,107 in 2005, is not the result of people increasing naturally. It owes to the municipal area widening through two mergers, in 2005 and 2007, and the step in the figures mirrors those mergers. That the number of schools jumped from 19 in 2005 to 28 in 2006 and 30 in 2007 owes to the same mergers.

Upon that, looking inside after the mergers, it has gently leveled off, peaking at 191,107 in 2005 and reaching 194,415 in 2020, nearly level. Those under 15 fell steadily, from 26,352 in 2005, after the mergers, to 21,814 in 2020. The share aged 65 and over rose from 14.9% (2000) to 29.5% (2020), to near three in ten. The household-with-children share is 19.8% (2020). The Childcare Waitlist has been zero in recent years, and the Fiscal Capacity Index was 0.82 in fiscal 2023. The figure of a municipal area widened by merger quietly aging appears in the numbers. Why it takes this form cannot be read without going back over the history of highway and merger.

Kumagaya’s skeleton is set upon a highway joining Edo and Kyoto. Kumagaya-juku was a post station counting eighth from Edo among the sixty-nine stages of the Nakasendo, flourishing as a key of the highway where people and goods came and went. The location as a junction of transport on the flatland caught between the Tone River and the Arakawa River was this town’s starting point.

Yet that post town was lost in a single night. In August 1945, the eve of the war’s end, a great air raid reduced the streets of Kumagaya to scorched earth. Much of the look of the post station that had continued from the Edo era was lost through this air raid and postwar city planning, and what remained was a scant few things such as monuments. The old layer of a highway post station was cut off once by the war.

What decided the present shape of the municipal area was the Heisei mergers. In October 2005 the old Kumagaya-shi merged with Menuma town and Osato town, and further in February 2007 incorporated Konan town. Through two mergers, a city with the highway post station as its core widened into a broad-area city of the northern Saitama, joining the surrounding towns. That the number of schools jumped from 19 to 30 owes to several former towns’ school networks being bundled into a single city in these mergers. And around this time the town came to be known by another name too. In 2005 an effort flying the banner “Hot, Kumagaya!” began, and in 2007 it recorded the then-highest domestic temperature of 40.9 degrees, so that its name spread nationwide as a town putting effort into countermeasures against heat. Beginning with a highway post station, becoming scorched earth in an air raid, and widening by merger — this town’s form stands upon the history of the Nakasendo and merger.

What characterizes Kumagaya-shi is that, after the municipal area widened at a stroke by merger, the population leveled off and aging advanced to near three in ten. From 2005 to 2020, after the mergers, the total population held nearly level, but those under 15 fell by about four thousand five hundred, and the share aged 65 and over rose steadily. With neither large inflow nor outflow, the generations already living there grow old as they are — a form common to mature regional central cities.

The figures of living infrastructure mirror both merger and maturity. The elementary schools increased at a stroke from 19 to 30 through the two mergers, and have since moved around 30. This is less consolidation than the form in which the school networks of several former town areas were bundled as they were by merger. The Childcare Waitlist has moved at zero in recent years. But this, rather than the result of demand being fully met, has the strong aspect of supply and demand balancing as the number of children gently thins. The total population has leveled off, the children decrease, and only aging advances — the central city of the northern Saitama, begun with a highway post station and rebuilt through an air raid, has entered a mature phase poor in inflow. These are not separate figures, but different appearances of a single phase.

Kumagaya bundles several functions into a single municipal area. One is the character of a junction of the highway, beginning with the Nakasendo post station Kumagaya-juku, which has supported the standing of a central city of the northern Saitama as a key of transport on the flatland caught between the Tone River and the Arakawa River. Another is the broad municipal area bundled by two mergers, where the towns of the former Menuma, Osato and Konan areas coexist here and there within a single city. And it also holds the character of a town putting effort into countermeasures against heat, known nationwide for its summer high temperatures.

From the Nakasendo post station, through scorched earth by air raid, to a broad-area city widened by merger — the condition that “a highway ran through flatland caught between the Tone River and the Arakawa River” called the post station, and its centrality became the core to be bundled by merger. Flatland caught between the two rivers let the highway through, the modern war cut it off once, and the Heisei merger overlaid the surrounding towns upon it. The centrality the landform set has been the vessel that receives the events of each age — that thread runs through this town.