Kasukabe-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 230,000 (229,792 in 2020). Over the five years from 232,709 in 2015, it fell by about three thousand. Still at a scale exceeding two hundred thousand, it is a city that has entered a phase of decline.

What I want to note here is that the number of children decreases far faster than the total population. Those under 15 fell by about fifty-four hundred — nearly a fifth — in just five years, from 26,611 (2015) to 21,178 (2020). In the same span the share aged 65 and over rose from 27.9% to 29.9%, nearing three in ten. The household-with-children share is 16.3% (2020), on the lower side even compared with other bedtowns of the same Saitama. The land price of residential areas is about 100,000 yen per m² (2026). The Fiscal Capacity Index is 0.71 (2023), short of 1.0, on the side that makes up the shortfall with the local allocation tax. The Childcare Waitlist fell slightly, from 11 (2024) to 9 (2025). Why these numbers took this form cannot be read without going back over the history of the post town and the railway.

Kasukabe’s skeleton is built upon two transport lines — highway and railway — overlapping across the eras on the same place. In 1616 Kasukabe-juku was opened as a post station of the Nikko Kaido (and the Oshu Kaido). The fourth post town counting from Nihonbashi in Edo, in the Tenpo period it held one honjin, one waki-honjin and forty-five inns, and flourished as a commercial town where a six-day market stood on days bearing the numbers four and nine. As a highway settlement, in the term of historical geography, where people and goods gathered along the highway, this town’s first foundation was laid.

The second line is railway. In 1899 the Tobu Railway opened, and Kasukabe Station (today’s Kasukabe Station) was placed. With the Showa era, the Tobu Noda Line (today’s Urban Park Line) also ran through, and the highway post town changed its character into a railway node. In 1954 it carried out city status as the thirteenth city in Saitama Prefecture. In the postwar high-growth period, to this town directly linked to the city center by the Tobu line, people who commute to the city center and their families gathered in search of housing, and it grew its population as a bedtown of the Tokyo outskirts. Opened as a highway post town, tied to the city center by railway, and swollen as a bedtown — this town’s population has piled in layers upon the two lines of the Edo-era highway and the modern railway.

What characterizes Kasukabe-shi is that, while the total population fell by three thousand, the number of children fell by about fifty-four hundred — nearly twice as much. A bedtown that swelled by gathering young households commuting to the city center in the high-growth period thins the next generation as that generation ages — the phase, in terms of population dynamics, that comes after a bedtown has run its course appears here clearly in the numbers.

In this phase, the waitlist figure too calls for a distinctive reading. Kasukabe’s waitlist fell slightly, from 11 to 9, but this is also the flip side of the absolute number of children thinning by nearly a fifth. If the children themselves decrease, the total volume of childcare demand shrinks too, and the waitlist figure can fall without increasing supply. It is the very opposite, in background, of decreases like those of Kawasaki or Chofu, which are “the result of making supply catch up to demand amid increasing children.” In this town, where the household-with-children share stays at 16.3% and the aging rate nears three in ten, the figure of a waitlist of 9 can be read not as proof of full supply but as one aspect of demand itself contracting. Numbers gain meaning only when several are laid over one another.

Kasukabe holds several functions within the city. One is the city center, which opened as Kasukabe-juku, a post town of the Nikko Kaido, and still keeps its origin as a commercial town opened along the highway in its street layout. Another is the character of a railway node, where the Tobu Sky Tree Line and the Tobu Urban Park Line cross at Kasukabe Station. With the modern railway laying a line over the Edo-era highway settlement, this town became a suburban node tying the city center to the Nikko and Noda directions.

From a highway post town to a railway node, and further to a bedtown commuting to the city center — the condition “a land that people and goods pass through” has, consistently in the age of the highway and the age of railway, decided this town’s functions. Both the bustle of the post town and the railway node are, at root, set upon the same locational condition of lying on a route along which people and goods come and go between Edo / Tokyo and the northern Kanto. Being a thoroughfare has long governed this town’s nature.