Nagareyama-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 200,000 (199,849 in 2020). What I want to note here is the form of that increase. From 150,527 in 2000 to 152,641 in 2005 the five years were nearly flat, and from there to 199,849 in 2020, in the latter fifteen years it rose by nearly fifty thousand. It draws a stair-like curve, the rise standing up partway through.

Looking inside, the way the number of children rose stands out. Those under 15 rose by a little over ten thousand, from 20,870 (2000) to 31,172 (2020). A city where the absolute number of children rises by nearly five-tenths is extremely rare even nationally. The land price of residential areas is about 152,000 yen per m², lower than neighboring Ichikawa and close to Funabashi. The Fiscal Capacity Index is 0.92 (fiscal 2023), a level covering much of expenditure with its own tax revenue. The Childcare Waitlist was zero in the latest figure. Each of these numbers, and above all the form of the population curve standing up partway through, cannot be read without going back to what happened in 2005.

Nagareyama’s skeleton is made of water roads — the Edo River flowing to the west, and the Tone Canal flowing to the north. In the Edo era, this town was known as a producing region of white mirin, and made its name as “for mirin, Nagareyama” as far as Edo, Kyoto, and Osaka. What supported the brewing was the river transport of the Edo River and the Tone Canal. The Tone Canal was Japan’s first Western-style canal joining the Tone River and the Edo River, and as a water highway carrying the raw materials and products of brewing, it supported Nagareyama’s economy. What economic geography would call “a producing region joined by river transport” was this town’s first foundation.

The second foundation, which inscribes its name in history, is the closing days of the shogunate. In the midst of the Boshin War, the Shinsengumi placed its headquarters here in Nagareyama, and the commander Kondo Isami surrendered to the new government army calling himself Okubo Yamato, parting ways with Hijikata Toshizo. The site of Kondo Isami’s camp remains there to this day. The brewing town of river transport was also a land holding a scene of the history of the shogunate’s end.

The third foundation, which transformed the population curve, is the railway. Nagareyama, which enacted city status in 1967, long held its population gently, but when the Tsukuba Express opened in 2005, development as a residential city advanced centered on stations such as Nagareyama-otakanomori, and the child-rearing generation flowed in greatly. The municipality raised the slogan “To become a mother, choose Nagareyama,” seeking to attract households, but this was no more than a slogan for attraction; the substance that moved the population was the single railway joined directly to the city center in 2005 and the residential-land development along it. The functions of brewing, river transport, and railway are layered, era by era, upon the same waterside town.

What characterizes Nagareyama-shi is that, while the population rose by fifty thousand, the number of children rose by a little over ten thousand. It appears in the figures of living infrastructure in a form exactly opposite to the consolidation common to regional cities where population has greatly fallen. The elementary schools in the city rose by three, from 15 to 18. New households sought housing in the residential land widened by the railway’s opening, the children increased, and the school network moved to the expanding side. The phenomenon exactly opposite to schools being consolidated in a town where children decrease is happening here.

The Childcare Waitlist was zero in the latest figure, but this zero is the opposite in meaning from the “zero that is the result of the absolute number of children thinning,” common to regional cities in population decline. It is a zero reached as the result of keeping supply caught up with demand in a town where the child-rearing generation flows in and children suddenly increase. Whereas neighboring Funabashi cannot quite keep supply caught up with the increase in children and holds a waitlist in the tens, Nagareyama keeps a zero waitlist within the same flow of “children increasing.” Even within the same northwestern Chiba, how the increasing children are received changes how the numbers come out. Even with the same “zero waitlist,” whether children are increasing or thinning behind it changes the reading entirely. Laid beside Funabashi’s, that difference first comes into view.

Nagareyama, as a town opening on the waterside of the Edo River and the Tone Canal, holds a function of its own. One is its face as a waterside, where the Edo River flowing to the west and the Tone Canal flowing to the north — once the river-transport roads carrying white mirin — now remain in the town as scenery of water and greenery. Another is its face as a place of the history of the shogunate’s end, where the site of Kondo Isami’s camp, where the Shinsengumi placed its headquarters and Kondo surrendered, is kept together with the memory of the brewing town.

And what decided this town’s present is the time, 2005. The opening of the Tsukuba Express stood the formerly gentle population curve up from that year, and remade the area around Nagareyama-otakanomori Station into a residential city. From a brewing producing region joined by river transport, through a town holding the history of the shogunate’s end, to a residential city joined directly to the city center by railway — onto the landform of “the waterside joined by the Edo River and the Tone Canal,” the railway of 2005 loaded a new function. In the days of Edo, the water roads supported the town; now the rail line is remaking the town. Era by era, a different “road” has moved this waterside town.