Hanno-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about eighty thousand (80,361 in 2020). Its course is a gentle decline. From 83,210 in 2000, after rising once to 84,860 in 2005, it has gently fallen through 83,549 in 2010 and 80,715 in 2015 to 80,361 in 2020. Note that in 2005 it incorporated a village in the western mountains, but that village was a mountain village with a small population, and the step in the city’s total is small.

Looking inside the figures, a form typical of a town at the edge of a great city’s commuting zone appears. The share aged 65 and over rose roughly twofold over twenty years, from 15.7% (2000) to 31.4% (2020), passing three in ten. The household-with-children share is 18.2% (2020), and the Childcare Waitlist was zero in both 2024 and 2025. The Fiscal Capacity Index was 0.70 in fiscal 2023 — a level covering seven-tenths of expenditure with its own tax revenue, on the higher side of middling for a small-to-mid city. The figure of a town with its back to the mountain forests, gently losing population while deepening its aging, appears in the numbers. Why it took this form cannot be read without going back over the history of forestry and suburbanization.

This town’s skeleton is set by the timber that the mountains behind it raised, and by the modern flow that later folded it into the edge of a great city’s commuting zone. The old layer is mountains and rivers. The area including this town lies at the edge where the Kanto plain shifts into mountain land, and several rivers flow out from the valleys onto the plain. In the Edo era, the mountain villages gathered timber cut from the mountains at the riverside, lashed it into rafts, sent it down the river, and over many days floated it to the streets of Edo. Because it was timber coming from the western rivers as seen from Edo, the timber of this area came to be called “Nishikawa timber.” Old records show that already by the mid-Edo era many rafts were being floated. This town flourished as a forestry village sending timber out to Edo, and as a riverside town where the floated timber and the people gathered.

And in the modern era this town changed its character. As railways ran through and access to the great cities improved, residential land spread across the area near the plain, and the town took on the character of a residential area at the edge of a great city’s commuting zone. It became a city in 1954, and in 2005 incorporated a village in the western mountains, coming to hold within its municipal area everything from the mountain forests to the edge of the plain. A forestry village that floated timber to Edo became a residential area at the edge of a great city’s commuting zone — this town’s form stands upon the history of forestry and suburbanization that the geography of the boundary between plain and mountain land held.

What characterizes Hanno-shi is that, while bearing the history of forestry and suburbanization, it gently loses population and deepens its aging. From 83,210 in 2000 to 80,361 in 2020, it fell by about three thousand over twenty years. The location at the edge of a great city’s commuting zone holds a power to draw people, but is at the same time within a tug-of-war over people with towns closer to the great cities. As the generation that moved into the residential land once opened at the edge of the plain grows older, and the inflow of a young generation does not fully make up for it, the population can be read as having gently declined. That the share aged 65 and over passed three in ten at 31.4% in 2020 is its expression too.

On the other hand, the Childcare Waitlist was zero in both 2024 and 2025. A Fiscal Capacity Index of 0.70 is a level covering seven-tenths of expenditure with its own tax revenue, on the higher side of middling for a small-to-mid city. The income of residents who commute to the great cities, and the establishments spread across the municipal area, can be read as supporting the tax source at a higher-than-middling level. A gently declining population, aging past three in ten, and yet finances higher than middling — the town at the boundary of plain and mountain land, with its back to the mountain forests, holds these three at once. Cutting out a single figure to gaze at it alone, one mistakes the town’s figure.

Hanno holds several functions at the boundary of plain and mountain land. One is the history of “Nishikawa-timber” forestry, which lashed the timber that the mountains behind it raised into rafts and floated it to Edo, holding the old layer where mountain villages and a riverside town joined. Another is its position, where railways joining the great cities run through, keeping the character of a residential area at the edge of a great city’s commuting zone. And the location of the edge where the plain shifts into mountain land called in forestry, and later became the ground for spreading residential land toward the plain.

From a forestry village that rafted timber cut from the mountains down to Edo, to a residential area at the edge of a great city’s commuting zone — the condition “opening onto the edge where the Kanto plain shifts into mountain land” first called in the forestry that went down the river, and later called in suburbanization. The location of southwestern Saitama Prefecture, where plain and mountain land meet, once dropped timber into the river and now sends people off to the city center. Only the recipient of what it sends out has changed, from trees to people; the character of being “a place that sends something out from the edge of the plain” has not changed in the age of forestry or in the age of suburbanization.