Ichihara-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 270,000 (269,524 in 2020). Peaking at 280,416 in 2010, it has turned to a gentle decrease.

What I want to note here is that two indicators face opposite ways. One is the decrease in children: those under 15 fell by nearly twelve thousand over twenty years, from 41,908 in 2000 to 30,046 in 2020. The share aged 65 and over rose from 13.0% to 29.2%, nearing three in ten. The other is the Fiscal Capacity Index, at 1.06 in fiscal 2023, exceeding one. This means it can cover expenditure with its own tax revenue alone, one of the few local governments that can do without the local allocation tax. The population decreases and aging advances, yet the finances are self-sustaining — this seemingly mismatched combination cannot be read apart from the industrial belt on the bayside. The elementary schools fell from forty-seven to forty-one, and the Childcare Waitlist has moved at zero. Why it took this form cannot be read without going back over the history of merger and bayside development.

Ichihara’s skeleton was set by five towns becoming one and reclaiming the sea to hold industry. In May 1963, the five towns of Anesaki, Ichihara, Goi, Ichitsu, and Sanwa merged to form Ichihara City. Over the city’s name, Goi town and Ichihara town — the two great forces of the time — contended over whether it should be “Goi City” or “Ichihara City,” and in the end “Ichihara,” which is also the district name, was taken. In exchange, the administrative center was placed in the former Goi town, which was the most developed. Within one city, multiple centers stand side by side — here is the starting point of a town born of a merger.

What decisively set this town’s character was the postwar bayside development. The reclamation of the Tokyo Bay shore advanced, and Ichihara’s bayside was incorporated into one corner of Chiba Port. There, chemical-industry enterprises centered on the petroleum industry advanced one after another, and centered on the coasts of Anesaki, Chigusa, and Goi-minami, a petrochemical complex group of the nation’s largest scale was formed. It is one of the cores of the Keiyo Industrial Region, which continues from Urayasu to near Kimitsu. It is the type of a postwar bayside industrial city — reclaiming the sea to call in industry.

This concentration of industry is the very source of the present figure of a fiscal capacity exceeding one. The fixed-asset tax and corporate tax revenue that large-scale factories generate support the fiscal thickness that covers expenditure on its own. A town where five towns became one and reclaimed the sea to hold industry keeps its fiscal self-sufficiency even as the population decreases, by the tax revenue rising from it — this town’s form stands upon the history of merger and bayside industry.

What characterizes Ichihara-shi is that, even though the Fiscal Capacity Index is self-sustaining enough to exceed one, the number of children fell by nearly twelve thousand over twenty years. It appears in the figures of living infrastructure as a steady shrinkage. The elementary schools in the city fell by about six, from forty-seven to forty-one. As the number of children thins, the school network too has moved to the shrinking side little by little.

The Childcare Waitlist has moved at zero. But this is, rather than the result of meeting demand, more strongly the side of the absolute number of children decreasing and creating room in capacity. It is a structure repeatedly seen in regional cities where the absolute number of children thins. The figure of a zero waitlist must be read not only as “ease of child-rearing,” but as a set with the background that the number of children itself is thinning. While industrial tax revenue supports the finances, the age of the residents shifts toward the elderly, and the children thin. The strength of an industrial city’s finances, and the maturing and shrinking as a residential city, advance separately within the same town. So this town’s living cannot be measured by the single figure of fiscal capacity exceeding one.

Ichihara, as a town that had a sea on the Tokyo Bay shore able to be reclaimed, holds several functions of its own. One is the petrochemical complex group running along the bayside of the Tokyo Bay shore, which, as the core of the Keiyo Industrial Region, is the source of the tax revenue that covers the city’s finances on its own. Another is the broad municipal area itself, born of five towns merging. Beginning with the former Goi town that became the administrative center, the centers of each former town remain scattered across the municipal area.

Ichihara is a town where five towns became one and reclaimed the sea to hold industry. In the broad municipal area born of the merger, the bayside industrial belt, the centers of each former town, and inland residential areas coexist. The condition “there was a sea on the Tokyo Bay shore able to be reclaimed” called in industry, and that industry gave rise to fiscal self-sufficiency. It did not follow the natural landform. The human act of reclaiming the sea and setting industry upon it decided the town’s outline and the form of its finances — Ichihara is such a town.