Suginami-ku

In the most recent Population Census the population is about 591,000 (591,108). Over the ten years from 522,103 it added nearly seventy thousand. One of the larger-scale wards, and one that has gone on growing its population.

What is worth seeing here is that the number of children is rising too. Those under 15 rose from 49,358 to 58,944, nearly ten thousand more. Over the same period the share aged 65 and over rose from 16.7% to 19.8%, but among the wards it sits on the gentle side of aging. The residential land price is around 690,000 yen per m². The childcare waitlist is zero. The Fiscal Capacity Index is 0.60, 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 both keep rising, yet fiscal capacity stays at 0.60. Not to misread this value as the ward’s weakness takes overlaying the flow of people the Great Kanto Earthquake pushed west, the residential urbanization the railways led in, and the fiscal framework peculiar to the special wards.

Suginami’s skeleton lies atop the flow of people a single great earthquake drew. After the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, many left the burned center and moved into this area, and the form of a residential area took shape. The suburbanization-as-refuge of which disaster sociology speaks — disaster pushing a city’s population to the periphery — is this town’s first foundation.

The second foundation is the railway. In 1927 what is now the Seibu Shinjuku Line, and in 1933 what is now the Keio Inokashira Line, opened, and the tracks reaching the center spread, leading residential land in behind them. The flow of people moving in and the railways that supported it overlapped, and in 1932 the towns of Igusa, Wadabori, Takaido and others merged to form Suginami Ward. The population at its founding was about 146,000.

The third foundation, the one that decided this town’s coloring, is the gathering of people of letters. Spurred by the earthquake, writers and others moved to the area around Asagaya and Ogikubo, and from the late 1930s a gathering of literary figures called the “Asagaya-kai” came to be held. Migration to the suburbs triggered by disaster, the extension of residential land by railway, and the layer of people of letters that took root there — three flows overlapped, and Suginami was characterized as a residential area spreading to the west of the center.

What characterizes Suginami-ku is that, while the total population rose by seventy thousand, the number of children rose by nearly ten thousand. That appears in the figures for living infrastructure on the side opposite to the consolidations common in regional cities that lost large populations, though not in a simple form. Elementary schools in the ward fell from 47 to 42, five fewer over ten years. That schools fall 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, old small schools dating from before 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 residential ward where these three run at once, the living-infrastructure figures cannot be read through simple increase or decrease. The feel of the twist, schools falling while children rise, can never come through by pulling out only one of the increases or decreases.

Suginami-ku keeps a character of its own to this day. One is its face as a residential area that spread as post-earthquake suburbanization and the extension of railways overlapped, taking root as a place of life for those commuting to the center, centered on stations such as Asagaya, Koenji and Ogikubo. Another is the layer of people of letters, symbolized by the Asagaya-kai; the memory of being ground where writers gathered still remains in the town’s coloring.

Suginami lies on the western side of the center, near Shinjuku, linked to the center by several railways. From a place of refuge after the earthquake, to a residential area along the rails, and on to a town where people of letters took root — the condition of “flat suburb adjoining the west of the center” has stacked different layers, era by era. The people who moved in, the railways that extended, and the people of letters who gathered alike ride atop the flow of people a single great earthquake pushed out. The flow of people a single earthquake that burned the center sent west — the trace of that unseen wave still remains in the streetscapes of Asagaya and Koenji.