Soka-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about two hundred and forty-eight thousand (248,304 in 2020). From 225,018 in 2000 it rose by about twenty-three thousand over twenty years, and still keeps its upward trend.

What I want to note here is that, behind a population that keeps increasing, the age make-up moves. The share aged 65 and over rose more than twofold over twenty years, from 10.8% (2000) to 24.8% (2020). Those under 15 fell by about three thousand, from 32,484 to 29,088. The household-with-children share is 19.7% (2020), and the elementary schools are nearly flat, from 22 to 21. The Childcare Waitlist has been in the twenties in recent years too — within a city of two hundred and forty thousand it does not reach zero, but it has not swollen greatly. The Fiscal Capacity Index was 0.89 in fiscal 2023. The figure of a residential city of the Tokyo outskirts, keeping its upward trend while gently aging, appears in the numbers. Why it took this form cannot be read without going back over the history of the Nikko Kaido post town.

Soka’s skeleton was set not by a landform that was originally there, but by opening a marsh with human hands. In 1606 a figure named Okawa Zusho took up the reclamation of the marsh of the area, and in time, in 1630, it was officially recognized by the shogunate as Soka-juku. It was the second post town counting from Nihonbashi on the Nikko Kaido, and the first post town after entering Saitama Prefecture. Not a settlement where people gathered naturally, but a planned make-up — building a highway post by reclaiming wetland — lies at this town’s starting point.

Upon the post town, the layer of culture that the highway brought piled up. On the north side of the post town, along the Ayasegawa River, a row of pines continued. This is said to be the trace of pines planted at the time of the straightening work of the Ayasegawa in 1683, and was later known as Soka Matsubara, designated a National Place of Scenic Beauty as “Soka Matsubara, a Scenic Spot of the Narrow Road to the Deep North.” In 1689 Matsuo Basho passed through this post town on the journey of the Narrow Road to the Deep North. And as teahouses and peddlers lined the post town, senbei — once a preserved food — came to be sold in shops and spread, becoming Soka senbei. The highway post left the culture of pine rows, haiku and senbei across the area.

From the modern era on, the highway post handed its role on to a residential city of the Tokyo outskirts. The location of flat ground close to the city center worked as a receptacle for the postwar population increase, and the post town along the highway changed its form into a town where commuters live. From a post town that opened a marsh, to a highway land that left culture, and on to a residential area of the metropolitan sphere — this town’s form stands upon the history of a post town opened by human hands.

What characterizes Soka-shi is that, while the total population increased by about twenty-three thousand over twenty years, the number of children fell by about three thousand. It appears in the figures of living infrastructure as a gentle adjustment. The elementary schools within the city fell from 22 to 21, by just one. In step with the children gently thinning, the school network too moved slightly to the shrinking side.

The Childcare Waitlist has been in the twenties in recent years too, not reaching zero. This is not a smallness that is the result of the absolute number of children thinning, as in a regional city losing population; it can be read as a figure on the side where supply has not fully caught up to the demand of households with children, in a town whose population of just under two hundred and ninety thousand still keeps increasing. While aging advances, households with children also keep flowing into the residential city close to the city center, and the supply and demand of childcare are still short of balance. The children gently decrease, the share of the elderly nears a quarter, and yet the total population keeps increasing. Even the single figure of the waitlist cannot be read — whether it falls short or runs to spare — unless it is set back into these three flows.

Soka, as a town beginning from the second post town of the Nikko Kaido, holds several functions of its own. One is the location of flat ground close to the city center, which still supports its character as a residential city of the Tokyo outskirts. Another is Soka Matsubara, along the Ayasegawa River, where the highway’s row of pines remains as a National Place of Scenic Beauty, conveying to this day the memory of the post town Basho passed through. And Soka senbei continues as a local specialty that spread from the teahouses of the post town.

Soka is a town of a post town made by opening a marsh with human hands. From a highway post, to a land of culture that left pine rows and senbei, and on to a residential area of the metropolitan sphere — the condition that “a highway ran through flat ground close to the city center” has swapped on different functions era by era. The post town, the pine grove, and the residential land all stand, at root, upon the same starting point of having reclaimed the land and set down a highway post. It did not become a town because people gathered naturally. People gathered because the land was opened for the highway. That the order was reversed has become the premise of everything in today’s Soka.