Shinjuku-ku

In the most recent Population Census the population is about 349,000 (349,385). Over the ten years from 286,726 it added more than sixty thousand. An already densely populated central ward is in a phase of gathering still more people.

What draws the eye is that the number of children is rising too. Those under 15 rose from 24,989 to 29,202, some four thousand more. A central ward whose absolute number of children rises shows the same current that drew young households to Chofu in Tama or Nagareyama in Chiba. Over the same period the share aged 65 and over edged up only slightly, from 17.0% to 18.1%, so aging advances gently. The residential land price is in the 1.08-million-yen range (1,085,000 yen), among the very highest in the country. The Fiscal Capacity Index is 0.66; that a ward holding this many people and this land price falls below 1.0 reflects the gap between its daytime and nighttime populations and the fiscal structure peculiar to a great city. The childcare waitlist has been pressed down to zero at the latest reading. The combination of land prices above a million yen with children still rising forms a single picture only by tracing how a single post town added onto the Koshu Kaido swallowed, in turn, a station, a subcenter and the metropolitan government.

Shinjuku’s skeleton is a history in which large functions stacked, era by era, onto a single post town added to a highway after the fact. In 1699 a post town called Naito-Shinjuku was newly opened on the Koshu Kaido. One of the four Edo lodging stations alongside Shinagawa, Itabashi and Senju, it functioned as a relay point for the people and goods crossing the highway. The place name “new lodging” points to exactly that origin — a lodging added onto the highway after the fact. The advantage of a highway node, in the terms of economic geography, was this town’s first foundation.

From the Meiji era the town’s center of gravity shifted from highway to railway. As Shinjuku Station opened and became a node where several lines gathered, a commercial district spread around it. In 1947 the three wards of Yotsuya, Ushigome and Yodobashi merged to form Shinjuku Ward — three areas of differing character, a highway post town, temple-and-shrine land and samurai land, bound into a single administrative body.

The third foundation, the one that decided the town’s form, was the subcenter plan. After the war, the Nishi-Shinjuku subcenter was planned around the site of the former Yodobashi water-purification plant, and high-rise buildings rose one after another. In 1991 the Tokyo Metropolitan Government moved to Nishi-Shinjuku, completing the twin tower of about 243 meters designed by Tange Kenzo. As if drawn up by the height of the government building, surrounding high-rises competed to rise further. A single wayside lodging became a station town, then a subcenter holding the seat of administration — this town’s form stands on three tiers of origin: highway, railway, subcenter.

What characterizes Shinjuku-ku is that, while being central Tokyo, the total population rose by sixty thousand and the number of children by four thousand. That appears in the figures for living infrastructure in a form unlike the consolidations of regional cities of population decline, and unlike Chiyoda’s extreme day–night population gap. Elementary schools in the ward fell from 32 to 30, some two fewer over ten years. That schools edged down even as children rose suggests that consolidation and realignment of schools proceed on a logic of their own under the land and site constraints of a central ward.

The childcare waitlist has been pressed down to zero at the latest reading. Opposite in meaning to the “zero from a thinned absolute number of children” common in regional cities of population decline, it reads as a zero reached by keeping supply abreast as children keep rising. Young households return to the center, children increase, yet aging advances gently — in a ward where these run at once, the school network edges down a little and the waitlist settles at zero. The twist of schools falling while children rise hides behind the single phrase “zero waitlist,” and a single figure cannot bring it into view.

Shinjuku-ku holds several functions of its own. One is the Nishi-Shinjuku subcenter, raised by plan from the site of the former Yodobashi water-purification plant, holding a cluster of high-rises and the seat of administration in the Tokyo Metropolitan Government that moved there in 1991. Another is the vast commercial clustering centered on Shinjuku Station and the entertainment districts beginning with Kabukicho, inheriting in a different form the history of a post town that gathered people. Broad greenery such as Shinjuku Gyoen, opened on the site of the Naito family’s residence, also remains within the ward.

Shinjuku began as a single lodging added to a highway after the fact, and has shifted onto itself the functions of station, subcenter, entertainment district and seat of administration, era by era. The metropolitan government building, the high-rises and the entertainment districts alike were set, in turn, on the same condition: a place where a highway and a station gathered people. The starting point was no more than a single post town “added after the fact” onto the Koshu Kaido. That after-the-fact lodging has now swallowed the metropolitan government — the two characters of “new lodging” left in the name still tell of this town’s unexpected beginning.