Nakano-ku

In the most recent Population Census the population is about 345,000 (344,880). Over the ten years from 309,526 it added some thirty thousand. Even among the wards near the center, it is a ward that has steadily grown its population.

What is worth seeing here is that the number of children is rising too. Those under 15 rose from 27,666 to 29,123, some fifteen hundred more. Over the same period the share aged 65 and over rose from 16.3% to 19.1%, but among the wards it sits on the gentle side of aging. The residential land price is around 693,000 yen per m². The childcare waitlist is zero. Yet the Fiscal Capacity Index is 0.49, far below 1.0 — mirroring a structure common to the special wards, in which the ward’s own tax revenue alone cannot cover standard expenditure and it is supported by revenue through the Tokyo Metropolitan–Ward Financial Adjustment System and the like. People and children increase, yet fiscal capacity stays at 0.49 — to read this discrepancy rightly takes two backgrounds: that two towns of different eras grew back to back on the north and south of one station, and that the special wards sit within a framework of sharing revenue with the metropolis.

Nakano’s skeleton lies in two towns of different eras standing back to back on the north and south of one station. By the north exit of Nakano Station, commercial land that opened after the war — Nakano Sun Mall and Nakano Broadway — is packed. Known as a place where shops of manga, toys and hobbies gather, it has formed a distinctive amusement quarter where like-minded people and goods gather from across the country. The “clustering,” in the terms of economic geography, by which shops of the same character draw together in one place and raise their pull, was this town’s first foundation.

The second foundation, the one supporting the present population gain, is the former police-academy site on the station’s north side. Until 2001 this area was used as government facilities such as the National Police Academy and the Metropolitan Police Academy. With the facilities’ relocation, the state (the Ministry of Finance) disposed of the land, and the ward and private parties acquired it. A consolidated parcel was released at once, near the town center — this newly decided the town’s fate.

The acquired site was remade by plan, with uses divided. Built out as a district clustering office buildings, a university, a hospital, housing and a park, it became “Nakano Shiki-no-Machi (the town of Nakano’s four seasons)” in 2012. The nickname and the name of the park the ward built (Nakano Shiki-no-Mori Park) were decided by public solicitation the previous year, 2011. A postwar subculture amusement quarter, and a new district on a site released by the government — two origins of utterly different character coexist across one station; that is this ward’s form.

What characterizes Nakano-ku is that, while the total population rose by thirty thousand, the number of children rose by fifteen hundred. That appears in the figures for living infrastructure in a tangled form, unlike either the consolidations common in regional cities of population decline or simple addition. Elementary schools in the ward fell from 30 to 23, seven fewer over ten years. That the number of schools falls even as the absolute number of children rises looks at first the wrong way around, but it reads as a movement common to central wards that have taken in rising children anew while sorting out, by consolidation and rebuilding, the small schools finely placed after the war.

The childcare waitlist is zero. 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 supply abreast of demand while children keep rising. Children increase, the waitlist holds at zero, yet the number of schools falls through consolidation — in a central ward where these three run at once, the living-infrastructure figures cannot be read through simple increase or decrease. The twist of schools falling while children rise can never be explained by pulling out only the number of children, or only the number of schools.

Nakano-ku holds several functions of its own. One is the commercial land centered on Nakano Sun Mall and Nakano Broadway by the north exit of Nakano Station, which draws people from across the country as a place where shops of hobby and like interest gather. Another is Nakano Shiki-no-Machi, built on the former police-academy site on the same north side, where offices, a university, a hospital, housing and a park gather in one district, forming the ward’s new center.

Nakano adjoins Shinjuku and sits in a position directly linked to the center by the Chuo Line and others. From a postwar amusement quarter to a new district on a government site — the condition of “consolidated land before a station adjoining the center” has shifted different functions onto itself, era by era. The subculture clustering and the clustering of business, education and medicine on the site alike rest, in the end, on the same location: around one station near the center. After a postwar amusement quarter grew by the north exit, the site that was government land until 2001 was remade into a new district in about ten years. Two towns of different eras now share one station, back to back.