Meguro-ku

In the most recent Population Census the population is about 288,000 (288,088 in 2020). Over the five years from 277,622 in 2015 it added some ten thousand. An already densely populated ward that has gone on gathering people steadily.

What is worth seeing here is that the number of children is rising too. Those under 15 rose from 28,671 (2015) to 31,547 (2020), nearly three thousand more. Over the same period the share aged 65 and over edged down from 19.9% to 19.4%. Aging halts while children rise, both at once. Households with children make up 15.5% (2020), on the thicker side among the south-Tokyo wards. The residential land price is around 1 million yen per m² (2026), high even within the wards. The Fiscal Capacity Index is 0.73 (2023) — but because the 23 wards sit under the metropolitan financial-adjustment machinery, where the metropolis takes on certain functions and revenue and redistributes to the wards through the Tokyo Metropolitan–Ward Financial Adjustment System, a special ward’s fiscal capacity falling below 1.0 is the rule. The 0.73 is on the high side among special wards, but one must read the system rather than the figure itself. The childcare waitlist is 0 children (2025). Pressing the waitlist to zero in a ward where children rise reads as the result of keeping supply abreast of demand. That a mature residential area still goes on gathering young households has a clear starting point: the center was struck by the Great Kanto Earthquake and the Toyoko Line came through, and at that boundary a near-suburban farming village that had carried vegetables flipped at once into suburban housing — the afterheat of that reversal still lingers in the figures nearly a century on.

Meguro’s skeleton is land where, atop a landform a river carved, eras stacked. This ward sits in the southeastern part of the Musashino plateau, where the Meguro River and others carved the terraces into valleys, and tributaries carved them further into a landform of many slopes. Not a single flat slab but terraces and valleys interlocking — this landform laid the ground for the town’s character.

This ground was originally a near-suburban farming village supplying vegetables to Edo, and at once a place of recreation around old temples and shrines. Near the center, but with farmland still spreading — that was Meguro up to the Meiji era. The character of “a near-suburban farming village of a great city,” in the terms of historical geography, was this town’s first foundation.

What greatly changed that character were disaster and railway. When the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 struck the center, the move to shift homes to the relatively better-environed suburbs strengthened. And when the Tokyu Toyoko Line opened in 1927, the conditions for a suburban residential area within commuting reach of the center were met, and the farming village changed its face into housing. In 1932 the towns of Meguro and Hifusuma merged to form Meguro Ward of Tokyo City. From farming village to housing, from recreation ground to a place to live — atop the landform of a plateau the Meguro River carved, earthquake and railway set the new function of housing. That is the origin behind today’s figures, in which children rise too.

What characterizes Meguro-ku is that, while the total population rose by ten thousand in five years, the number of children rose by nearly three thousand. That appears in the figures for living infrastructure in a form opposite to the consolidations common in regional cities that lost large populations. A ward already matured as a residential area goes on gathering young households and children.

The childcare waitlist has been pressed down to 0 children (2025). A zero waitlist in a ward where children rise is opposite in meaning to the “zero from a thinned absolute number of children” common in regional cities of population decline. It is a zero reached by keeping the supply of childcare abreast of demand while children and population both grow. That households with children make up 15.5%, on the thicker side among south-Tokyo wards, is consistent with the rise in children. That the aging rate edged down from 19.9% to 19.4% reads as the inflow of the working-age generation, households with children among them, supporting the age composition. Children increase, aging halts, the waitlist hits zero — Meguro’s living-infrastructure figures read straight as the consequence of a mature residential area going on gathering the working-age generation.

Meguro-ku holds several functions of its own. One is the very landform, sloped and many-leveled, where the Meguro River and others carved the southeastern Musashino plateau into interlocking terraces and valleys. This relief makes a face of blocks and housing unlike a flat ward. Another is the several railways that pierce the ward; centered on Naka-Meguro Station, the Tokyu Toyoko Line and the Tokyo Metro Hibiya Line form commuting axes linking center and suburb.

This ward has shifted its function from an Edo near-suburban farming village to housing. The farmland, the recreation ground and the present residential area alike rest, in the end, on the same location: near the center and opening onto the plateau. A farming village carrying vegetables to Edo had, at the boundary of an earthquake and a railway, turned before anyone noticed into a residential area of top-tier land prices — such a reversal happened atop a sloped plateau. That Meguro Station on the Yamanote Line lies in neighboring Shinagawa-ku, the ward name and the station’s location not matching, is itself a trace of origin showing that this ground opened across several towns.