Adachi-ku

In the latest Population Census the population is about 695,000 (695,043). From the previous 617,123, it gained nearly eighty thousand. Already approaching seven hundred thousand in scale, it is one of the populous wards even among the twenty-three wards of Tokyo.

However, the number of children faces the opposite way to the total. Those under 15 fell from 82,218 to 75,589, nearly seven thousand. In the same span the share aged 65 and over rose from 15.9% to 24.5%. Behind a rising total population, the contents are surely shifting their center of gravity to the elderly side. The land price of residential areas is about 336,000 yen per m², a low level among the twenty-three wards. The Fiscal Capacity Index stays at 0.38 — but this is because special wards are under the financial adjustment system, and it is not placed in a structure of covering expenditure by ward tax alone. To read the lowness of the figure straight as “weakness” is hasty. The Childcare Waitlist rose slightly from 5 to 7, but from the scale of a ward approaching seven hundred thousand, it is at a level largely held down. The twist of children decreasing while the total population rises does not reveal its source without going back to when it was the post town of the highway linking Edo and the Tohoku.

Adachi’s skeleton is the line drawn as a junction of the highway linking Edo and the Tohoku. In 1625, along the highway the shogunate developed, the settlements and post-town functions scattered around were gathered, and Senju-juku came into being. Counting from Nihonbashi, it was the first post town of the Nikko Kaido and the Oshu Kaido, and the bundled town swelled enough to be called “Dai-Senju.” It is a typical case, in economic geography, of a city set upon the flow of people and goods that is a highway.

Senju-juku functioned as the gateway for people and goods passing between Edo and the Tohoku. As a highway post town and, at the same time, with the Arakawa (the present Sumida River) and the Ayase River close by, river transport too flourished, and boats put in and out at the river port, where goods such as rice, vegetables, and ceramics were collected and dispersed. A junction where two flows — highway and river transport — crossed pushed this town up into a post town among the largest near Edo, and by the end of the Edo era it grew until about ten thousand lived here. At the place where the land road and the water road crossed, people and goods naturally pooled.

From the Meiji era on, the highway’s gateway carried over its role to a town of railways and roads. The urban area spread over the lowland between the Sumida River and the Arakawa (the Arakawa floodway), and after the war it drew in workers and their families as a downtown of Tokyo and increased its population. Kita-senju, where Senju-juku was placed, is still a transport junction into which several railways run, where people pass to and fro. From a highway post town to a railway terminal, and to residential land approaching seven hundred thousand — this town’s form stands upon a history layered upon the flow linking Edo and the Tohoku.

What characterizes Adachi-ku is that, while the total population rose by nearly eighty thousand, the number of children fell by nearly seven thousand. It appears in the figures of living infrastructure as a gentle shrinkage, different from the violent consolidation common to regional cities in population decline. The elementary schools within the ward fell from 76 to 67, about nine. As the number of children gently thins, the school network too moved to the shrinking side little by little.

The Childcare Waitlist rose slightly from 5 to 7. But from the scale of a ward approaching seven hundred thousand, this can be read as a level largely held down. It is not the lowness of “the result of the absolute number of children thinning,” as in regional cities in population decline, but the lowness as the result of keeping supply and demand roughly balanced while there are still more than seventy thousand children. Children decrease gently, the share of the elderly rises to near a quarter, and yet the total population keeps rising — in a large downtown ward where such movements advance at once, the waitlist number too settles into a small range of swing. The increase of the total population and the decrease of children come into view only when lined up separately.

Adachi-ku holds several functions of its own. One is its character as a transport junction beginning with Senju-juku, where several railways run into Kita-senju, and the land that was the highway’s gateway still gathers people as a terminal. Another is the lowland urban area between two great rivers, the Sumida River and the Arakawa, where downtown housing and small and mid-sized factories densely overlap.

In the Edo era, Adachi pooled people and goods as the place where highway and river transport crossed. From a highway post town to a railway terminal, and further to downtown residential land approaching seven hundred thousand — the origin of “being upon the flow linking Edo and the Tohoku” has carried over different functions era by era. The post town, the river port, and the railway terminal are all, at root, set upon the same condition — a junction where people and goods pass east-west and north-south. Because the land highway and river transport crossed, people and goods pooled, and that pool called in, in order, the post town, the river port, and the terminal. Whether to take the convenience of the junction that is Kita-senju, or to mind the footing of lowland between two great rivers, the same Adachi shows a different face.