Kawaguchi-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 594,000 (594,274 in 2020). Over the five years from 578,112 in 2015, it rose by about sixteen thousand. At a scale nearing six hundred thousand, it is a city still keeping its growth.

What I want to note here is that, while the total population increases, the number of children faces the other way. Those under 15 fell by about eighteen hundred, from 74,476 (2015) to 72,665 (2020). In the same span the share aged 65 and over rose from 22.4% to 23.2%. Behind a rising total, its inside shifts its center of gravity little by little to the high-age side. The household-with-children share is 20.3% (2020). The land price of residential areas is about 235,000 yen per m², mirroring the level of a city at the southern edge of Saitama, close to the city center. The Fiscal Capacity Index is 0.93 (2023), short of 1.0, in a structure where part of standard expenditure is made up by the national local allocation tax. The Childcare Waitlist moved at a low level, from 10 (2024) to 9 (2025), nearly flat. Why these numbers took this form cannot be read without going back over the history of the Onari-do post station and casting.

Kawaguchi’s skeleton begins from the geography of lying just north of the huge consumption center that was Edo. In the Edo era the Nikko Onari-do was laid out as a road exclusive to the shogun’s pilgrimages to the Nikko Tosho-gu shrine, and Kawaguchi-juku was placed in this land. In addition, the river transport of the Arakawa and the Shibakawa, which flow through the city, tied the town to Edo — a great consumption center reached at once by going down the river. The condition, in economic geography, of “a supply land adjoining a great consumption center” came to decide this town’s fate.

What grew upon that condition were two local industries: casting and garden trees. Casting began as a side occupation in the farming off-season, and developed into a local industry in the course of being carried to Edo by the river transport of the Arakawa and the Shibakawa. Garden trees advanced in production and distribution in the Angyo district, and in time became a nationwide hub. Once Meiji-era enrichment-and-arms policy advanced, Kawaguchi developed rapidly as an industrial city, and when Kawaguchi-machi Station (today’s JR Kawaguchi Station) opened in 1910, casting came to be freighted by rail throughout the country. At the peak, around 1973, the casting cooperative’s members exceeded six hundred firms, output topped four hundred thousand tons, and the chimneys of the cupola — the melting furnaces — stood in rows across the town. In 1962 it became the setting of the film “The Town of Cupolas,” and the cauldron for the Olympic flame of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics was cast in this town.

But after the oil shock of the 1970s, for reasons such as declining demand and pollution, the casting factories around the station saw a string of relocations to the suburbs and closures. Close to the city center, holding consolidated breadth, and modest in price, the factory sites suited use for apartment blocks. Thus Kawaguchi changed its form from a town of casting to a bedtown of Tokyo, and increased its population. Opened as a post station of the Onari-do, tied to Edo by river transport, flourishing on casting, and its factory sites turned into places to live — this town’s form is the record of a history in which the rise and fall of industry piled in layers upon the geography of adjoining Edo.

What characterizes Kawaguchi-shi is that, while the total population increased by sixteen thousand, the number of children fell by eighteen hundred. The apartment blocks built on factory sites do not necessarily draw in households with children alone. A location close to the city center gathers people broadly, including single-person households and the working-age in their prime. That the household-with-children share stays at 20.3% can be read as one expression of that.

The Childcare Waitlist moved at a low level, from 10 to 9 — nearly flat. As the absolute number of children decreases, it can be read as a figure moving around where supply and demand nearly balance. What I want to be careful of rereading here is that a low waitlist does not necessarily mean room to spare for households raising children. Children gently decrease, yet the total population keeps rising, and the share of the elderly too goes up — in a city of six hundred thousand where these many flows advance at once, the waitlist figure too converges into a small range of swing. Even with the same “few waitlisted,” the way of reading changes entirely depending on whether children are increasing or decreasing behind it. The numbers mirror not superiority or inferiority but the structure of a town.

Kawaguchi holds several functions within its municipal area. One is the local casting industry, which grew on the foundation of the Onari-do post station and the river transport of the Arakawa and the Shibakawa, and is carried on within the city to this day. Another is the production and distribution of garden trees, which became a nationwide hub in the Angyo district and forms a second pillar of this town’s industrial history. Further, on the sites of the former factory zone near the station, facilities serving as bases for culture and industry, and large apartment blocks, have been developed, supporting the face of a residential city that makes use of its closeness to the city center.

Kawaguchi is designated a Core City, and the city holds a part of administrative authority of its own, near that of a prefecture. From the Onari-do post station to an industrial city of casting and garden trees, and further to a town that lives on its factory sites — the condition “adjoining north of Edo and Tokyo” has swapped on different functions era by era. Both the casting factories and the apartment blocks on their sites are, at root, set upon the same location of being close to a great consumption center. From the side that sent goods to Edo, to the side that commutes to Tokyo. The condition of adjacency has called in function after function.