Tokorozawa-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 342,000 (342,464 in 2020). Over the five years from 340,386 in 2015, it rose by about two thousand. At an already mature scale, it is a city that has entered a phase of only very gentle growth.

What I want to note here is that the number of children moves at a different pace from the total. Those under 15 fell by about sixty-four hundred in five years, from 39,480 (2015) to 33,050 (2020). In the same span the share aged 65 and over rose from 25.0% to 25.4%. Behind a slightly rising total, the children surely thin, and the share of the elderly already passes a quarter. The household-with-children share is 16.1% (2020). The land price of residential areas is about 191,000 yen per m². The Fiscal Capacity Index is 0.94 (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 fell from 6 (2024) to 1 (2025). Why these numbers took this form cannot be read without going back over the history of the plateau, the airfield, and the Seibu Railway.

Tokorozawa’s skeleton has been drawn upon the geography of a flat Musashino plateau. The city sits on the Musashino plateau, with the Sayama hills spreading to the south. This area has long been known as a production center of Sayama tea, an agricultural land where tea fields spread across the plateau. The very geographic condition of holding consolidated flat ground came to decide this town’s fate.

The first foundation is aviation. From conditions such as flat terrain, few lightning strikes, and being close to Tokyo with good rail access, in 1911 Japan’s first airfield was opened in this land. Thereafter Tokorozawa came to be known as the “birthplace of aviation.” It is an example, in economic geography, of a city function placed not by natural occurrence but called in by the condition of flat ground. The airfield site was later opened as the prefectural Tokorozawa Aviation Memorial Park, founded in 1978, and in 1993 the Tokorozawa Aviation Museum was placed there.

The second foundation is railway. After the war, development of the line and tourism by the Seibu Railway advanced, and in 1986 the head office of the Seibu Railway moved to Tokorozawa. Tokorozawa Station, where the Ikebukuro Line and the Shinjuku Line cross, became a central base for the company. As the northwestern outskirts of Tokyo, residential land spread across the plateau. And in November 2020, the publisher KADOKAWA’s Tokorozawa Sakura Town opened in the Higashi-Tokorozawa area. This was developed as the core facility of the COOL JAPAN FOREST initiative, a joint project with the city. An airfield was placed on a plateau of tea fields, the Seibu railway spread residential land, and a cultural complex was set down — this town’s form is the record of a history in which the functions of aviation, railway and culture piled in layers across the eras upon the geography of a flat plateau.

What characterizes Tokorozawa-shi is that, while the total population increased by two thousand, the number of children fell by sixty-four hundred. A slight rise of the total, and a large decrease of children, advance at once within the same five years. The household-with-children share stays at 16.1%, mirroring the figure of a residential city long since matured. The first-generation dwellers enter old age, and the weight of households with children falls — it is one phase that a residential city, spread by postwar rail-line development, meets after half a century.

The Childcare Waitlist fell from 6 to 1. But the rereading here calls for care. The waitlist fell not necessarily as the result of childcare supply growing thick at a stroke. As the absolute number of children thins by about sixty-four hundred in five years, demand itself fell, and there is the aspect of supply and demand nearing balance. The children clearly decrease, the share of the elderly passes a quarter, and yet the total population rises slightly — in a town where these many flows advance at once, the waitlist figure too converges toward a small value. Even with the same “waitlist decreasing,” the meaning differs entirely from a decrease in a town where children increase. Whether the waitlist decreased, or merely appears to have decreased because the children decreased — even with the same figure, the line of reading divides depending on what moves behind it.

Tokorozawa holds several functions within a single plateau. One is the prefectural Tokorozawa Aviation Memorial Park and the Tokorozawa Aviation Museum, opened on the site of Japan’s first airfield, which keep inscribing this town’s origin on the surface of the land. Another is Tokorozawa Station, where the Ikebukuro Line and the Shinjuku Line cross and the head office of the Seibu Railway was placed, forming a node of the rail network joining the city center and the line. Further, in Higashi-Tokorozawa stands KADOKAWA’s Tokorozawa Sakura Town, gathering people as a cultural base bundling a museum, a library and the like.

From a plateau of tea fields to a land of aviation, to a city along the Seibu line, and further to a residential city holding a cultural complex — the condition “a flat plateau close to Tokyo” has swapped on different functions era by era. The airfield, the railway base, and the cultural complex are, at root, all set upon the same condition of flat ground. Rather than following the natural landform, consolidated flat ground and closeness to Tokyo have called in function after function.