Katsushika-ku

In the latest Population Census the population is about 453,000 (453,093). From the previous 421,519, it gained more than thirty thousand. It is a mid-sized downtown ward among the twenty-three wards.

However, the number of children faces the opposite way to the total. Those under 15 fell from 54,458 to 51,556, nearly three thousand. In the same span the share aged 65 and over rose from 16.7% to 24.7%. 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 396,500 yen per m². The Fiscal Capacity Index is 0.35, 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. What I want to note here is that the Childcare Waitlist has moved at zero. It can be read as a zero as the result of keeping supply caught up to demand amid the absolute number of children gently decreasing. The balance of holding the waitlist at zero while children decrease does not fall into place without going back to the origin — the gate-front of Shibamata Taishakuten and the riverside of the Koai-tame.

Katsushika’s skeleton is a downtown land where two conditions — a place of faith and a waterside — overlap. In 1629, Shibamata Taishakuten of the Nichiren sect was opened, and as its gate-front a place where people gather opened. The shopping street lined along its approach is held to be the oldest within the ward, and because it escaped the fires of the Second World War, the scenery of an old gate-front town remains today. What historical geography would call “the emergence of a settlement centered on a place of faith” was this town’s first foundation.

The second foundation is water. In the ward’s northeast spreads a riverside centered on a reservoir, the Koai-tame. This is a waterside that, in the Edo era, the locals managed as a reservoir from the old riverbed left by the renovation of a river, and which was later developed as Mizumoto Park, becoming the largest metropolitan park among the twenty-three wards. The geography of lowland edged by river and reservoir lets downtown living and a vast waterside greenery coexist.

And this gate-front town and downtown scenery came to be known across the nation through film. Shibamata became a location for the Shochiku film series “Otoko wa Tsurai yo,” and the area with the approach to Taishakuten and the Yagiri ferry was inscribed in people’s memory as the very byword for “downtown.” In 2018 the scenery of Shibamata was selected as a nationally important cultural landscape. From the gate-front of an old temple, to a downtown holding a riverside, and further to the stage of a film — the conditions of faith, waterside, and memory are layered over the ages upon this lowland.

What characterizes Katsushika-ku is that, while the total population rose by more than thirty thousand, the number of children fell by nearly three thousand, and yet the waitlist is held at zero. It appears in the figures of living infrastructure as a gentle adjustment, different from the violent consolidation common to regional cities in population decline. The elementary schools within the ward fell from 52 to 49, about three. As the number of children gently thins, the school network too moved to the shrinking side little by little.

The Childcare Waitlist has moved at zero. Its meaning differs from the zero of “the result of the absolute number of children thinning,” as in regional cities in population decline. While there are still more than fifty thousand children and the total population too keeps rising, it can be read as a zero as the result of keeping supply caught up to demand. Even with the same “zero waitlist,” the reading changes entirely depending on whether children are greatly thinning behind it, or supply is being piled up while the number is held. Children decrease gently, the share of the elderly rises to near a quarter, and yet the total population rises and the waitlist is held at zero. Look only at the decrease of schools and it seems a shrinking town; look only at the zero waitlist and it seems a town with room to spare. Only by overlapping the four numbers does the real image of Katsushika emerge.

Katsushika-ku holds several functions of its own. One is the gate-front centered on Shibamata Taishakuten, where the scenery of the old approach that escaped war damage still remains as a place of faith and crowd-drawing. Another is Mizumoto Park, spreading in the ward’s northeast, which, as the largest metropolitan park among the twenty-three wards, holding the riverside of the Koai-tame, provides a vast waterside greenery to downtown.

In the Edo era, Katsushika opened upon the condition of a place of faith and the waterside left by the renovation of a river. From the gate-front of an old temple, to a downtown holding a riverside, and further to the byword for “downtown” in a film — the condition of “lowland edged by faith and waterside” has carried over different functions era by era. The gate-front approach and the riverside park are, at root, set upon the same condition — the waterside that a place of faith and a river brought. Incense smoke drifts over the approach to Taishakuten, and waterfowl alight on the reservoir of Mizumoto Park. Two old edgings — faith and waterside — still decide the feel of downtown.