Narita-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 133,000 (132,906 in 2020). Over the five years from 131,190 in 2015, it rose by about seventeen hundred. It is a mid-sized city in northern Chiba.

What I want to note here is that the number of children is decreasing. Those under 15 fell by a little over fifteen hundred, from 18,347 (2015) to 16,794 (2020). In the same span the share aged 65 and over rose from 21.0% to 23.6%. Behind a total population that rises slightly, the contents shift their center of gravity toward the elderly. The household-with-children share is 20.0% (2020). The land price of residential areas is about 57,000 yen per m², a restrained level within Chiba Prefecture. And what shows its character most is the Fiscal Capacity Index, at 1.27 (2023). This figure exceeding 1.0 is not an evaluation that “the finances are superior,” but means a self-sustaining fiscal structure in which, thanks to fixed-asset tax related to the airport and the like, standard expenditure is covered on its own almost without depending on the local allocation tax. The Childcare Waitlist fell from 17 (2024) to 9 (2025). Why it took this form cannot be read without going back over the history of the temple town, the stock farm, and the airport.

Narita’s skeleton is drawn from two histories: a place of faith, and a giant facility set upon the plateau. The first foundation is Naritasan Shinsho-ji, said to have been opened in the Tengyo era of the tenth century. As the temple town of this old temple, this land had a place where people gathered from of old. What historical geography would call “the rise of a temple town centered on a place of faith” is the town’s starting point. In the Meiji era the Shimosa imperial stock farm of the Imperial Household Ministry was placed here, and until the 1950s Narita was a purely rural-type city with tourism and farming as its two pillars. Even at the point in 1954 when Narita town and one town and six villages merged and enacted city status, the town’s character was still that of a temple-town and farming town.

The second foundation, which decisively recomposed this town’s character, is the airport. In July 1966, the Cabinet decided to build the New Tokyo International Airport in the district centered on Sanrizuka. Against this, the local farmers formed an opposition league, and a long, fierce opposition movement — the Sanrizuka Struggle — continued. Twelve years after the plan, in May 1978, the airport opened with a single A runway (the present Narita International Airport). With a giant international airport set upon a consolidated plateau, the municipal area expanded, and the industrial structure of a purely rural type with tourism and farming changed greatly. What I want to note here is that the town of Narita laid the character of “the site of an international airport” over the origin of “the temple town of faith.” An airport was set upon the land of a temple town and a stock farm, and the town’s center of gravity was recomposed — this town’s form stands upon the layering of two histories: an old temple and a plateau.

What characterizes Narita-shi is that, while the total population rose by about seventeen hundred, the number of children fell by a little over fifteen hundred. Even in a city holding an airport where many people come and go, the number of children as residents moves to the decreasing side, as in many of the nation’s regional cities. The share of the elderly rose by 2.6 points over five years. That there is a giant transport hub, and that the households raising children who live there increase, are separate matters — this is what these numbers show.

Upon that, the Childcare Waitlist fell from 17 (2024) to 9 (2025). A decrease in the waitlist amid a falling absolute number of children can, on one side, be read as the result of supply and demand moving in a slackening direction. The children decrease, the share of the elderly rises, and yet the total population holds a slight increase supported by the airport-related coming and going and employment — in a city where these three moves advance at once, the waitlist figure too moves in a small range of swing. Narita holds an international airport and is a city with much coming and going of, and residence by, people from foreign countries, but this article touches only on the fact of that coming and going and does not evaluate differences of living by origin. The amount of people’s coming and going, and the number of households raising children as residents, must be read separately or they will be mistaken for one another.

Narita, as a town holding consolidated land on a plateau, holds several functions of its own. One is Naritasan Shinsho-ji, with more than a thousand years of history, and the built-up area that opened as its temple town, surviving as a place of faith and of drawing crowds from of old. Another is Narita International Airport, set on the plateau in the city’s southeast, which, as one of the nation’s leading international hubs, bears much coming and going of people and goods. Two functions of wholly different origin — a temple town of faith and an international airport — coexist within one city.

Narita’s Fiscal Capacity Index of 1.27 can be read as the result of this coexistence. Because the giant airport facility is within the city, its own tax revenue such as fixed-asset tax becomes thick, and it became a self-sustaining fiscal structure that covers standard expenditure almost without depending on the local allocation tax. This is not an evaluation that “the finances are superior,” but the fact that this is a form the finances of a city holding a giant airport facility readily take. From a temple town, to the land of an imperial stock farm, and further to the site of an international airport — the condition “there is consolidated land on a plateau” has loaded different functions era by era: faith, a stock farm, an airport. The temple town, the stock farm, and the airport are all, at root, set upon the same landform of the Shimosa plateau — Narita is such a town, where faith and an airport coexist.