Narashino-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 176,000 (176,197 in 2020). Over the five years from 167,909 in 2015, it rose by a little over eight thousand. While many of the nation’s cities lose population, it is a city still holding an upward trend.

What I want to note here is that, even as the total rises, the absolute number of children is nearly flat. Those under 15 fell slightly over five years, from 22,309 (2015) to 22,186 (2020). In the same span the share aged 65 and over rose gently, from 22.3% to 23.0%. Behind a rising population, the number of children is held in place, and the center of gravity shifts little by little toward the elderly — three flows advance at once. The household-with-children share is 20.8% (2020). The land price of residential areas is about 189,000 yen per m². The Fiscal Capacity Index is 0.89; it does not reach 1.0, so it is a structure in which the shortfall is made up by the local allocation tax, but it is a level covering much of expenditure with its own tax revenue. The Childcare Waitlist rose from 2 (2024) to 5 (2025). Why these numbers took this form cannot be read without going back over the history of a drill ground and reclamation.

Narashino’s skeleton is made of lines drawn across a field and of land reclaimed from the sea. The first foundation is the military. In 1873, part of the Kogane-maki spanning present-day Narashino, Funabashi, and Yachiyo became an army drill ground, and at this time the Meiji emperor named this field “Narashino-hara.” The town’s name derives from its very origin as a military drill ground. It is, in economic geography, an example of a city set up not by spontaneous rise but with a national facility at its core.

The second foundation is the railway. In 1889 the five villages of Yatsu, Kukuta, Saginuma, Fujisaki, and Okubo-Shinden merged to form Tsudanuma village — a place name taking one character each from the “tsu” of Yatsu, the “ta” of Kukuta, and the “numa” of Saginuma. In 1895 Tsudanuma Station of the Sobu Line opened, and in the early 1920s the stations of the Keisei Line opened too, and this whole area was characterized as a railway corridor heading for the city center. In 1954, Tsudanuma town was renamed Narashino town, incorporated part of Chiba City, and enacted city status.

The third foundation is reclamation. From the 1960s into the 1970s, the Tokyo Bay shore was reclaimed one stretch after another, and residential land and commercial-industrial land were built. To the field of the drill ground and the railway corridor was added flat land reclaimed from the sea, and as a bedtown in the 20-to-30-kilometer zone from the city center, housing stood thick. The state-owned Yatsu Tidal Flat, however, escaped reclamation and became a registered site under the Ramsar Convention in 1993. In 1986 the JR Keiyo Line opened, adding a bayside transport axis as well. The three histories — drill ground, railway, and reclamation — are recomposed into the present form of a residential city within commuting reach of the city center.

What characterizes Narashino-shi is that, while the total population rose by eight thousand, the number of children is held nearly flat in place. It appears in the figures of living infrastructure as a quiet equilibrium, different both from the fierce consolidation common to regional cities in population decline and from the expansion of a Chofu where children increase. People keep flowing into a residential city within commuting reach of the city center, but its contents are not necessarily only an increase in households with children.

The Childcare Waitlist rose from 2 to 5. Unlike a town such as Urayasu that pushed the waitlist all the way down to zero, even with the number of children held in place, a small gap between demand and supply appears as a swing of a few people. The household-with-children share is 20.8%, a composition in which a little over one household in five is a household with children. In a bayside residential city where the absolute number of children does not move greatly, the share of the elderly exceeds two in ten and rises little by little, and yet the total population keeps rising, the waitlist figure too moves in a small swing of single-person units. Take out only the single figure that the total rises, and one misreads it as households with children increasing — inside it, the number of children has barely moved.

Narashino, as a town opening on flat land near the city center and onto the sea, holds several functions of its own. One is the commuting axis to the city center, with multiple railways — the Sobu Line, the Keisei Line, and the JR Keiyo Line — running through the city. The Sobu and Keisei run through the inland that was the field of the drill ground, and the Keiyo Line was added on the bayside reclaimed after the war, so that lines toward the city center overlap many-fold. Another is the Yatsu Tidal Flat, which escaped the reclamation of the 1960s and 70s and remained as a Ramsar-registered site — a seaside wetland where many migratory birds come, surviving right beside the built-up area.

Narashino, while inscribing the military origin of a drill ground in its name, is joined to the city center by railway and gained residential land by reclaiming the sea. The condition “between the field of the drill ground and the reclaimed sea” has loaded different functions era by era. The military field, the railway corridor, and the reclaimed residential land are all, at root, set upon the same location of flat land near the city center and the sea. And one quarter that was not reclaimed remained as a tidal flat. From the point where reclaimed land and preserved land lie side by side onward, it becomes the reader’s province to consider how to live.