Edogawa-ku

In the latest Population Census the population is about 698,000 (697,932). From the previous 619,953, 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.

What I want to note here is that the number of children has not greatly decreased. Those under 15 stayed to a decrease of about three thousand, from 89,365 to 86,270. In the same span the share aged 65 and over rose from 12.8% to 20.9%, but among the twenty-three wards it is placed on the gentle side of aging. Wards where the absolute number of children is held above eighty thousand are not many even looking across the twenty-three wards. The land price of residential areas is about 444,500 yen per m². The Fiscal Capacity Index is 0.39, 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 has moved at zero. A zero while holding more than eighty thousand children can be read as the result of keeping supply caught up to demand. Why, rarely among the twenty-three wards, children remain thick does not come into view without going back to the lowland surrounded on three sides by water and the history of flood control.

Edogawa-ku’s skeleton is the fight with water itself. The ward is bordered on the west by the Arakawa and the Naka River, on the east by the Edo River and the old Edo River, and looks south to Tokyo Bay. A lowland surrounded on three sides by water, it opened in the Edo era through new-field development by reclaiming wetlands, sandbars at river mouths, and sandy ground. The area was originally a low wetland with many floods, and flood control was this town’s greatest challenge. It is a town that, as disaster sociology would say, has stood by people living on vulnerable lowland.

What changed its fate was the construction of the Arakawa floodway (the present Arakawa) from the Taisho to the Showa era. With the completion of this artificial river, dug to prevent floods in the city center, floods across the ward greatly decreased. Even so, both banks of the Arakawa in the west are still a below-sea-level zone, with places lower than the sea surface at high tide. The landform in which the urban area spreads inside the levees that hold back water remains as this town’s fate.

And after the war, the ward remade its waterside once more. Through the Kasai offshore development project from 1972 to 2004, the coast was reclaimed and developed, and Kasai Rinkai Park was opened there. The lowland that had been threatened by floods changed its form into a town holding at once an urban area protected by flood control and a waterfront park born of reclamation. The ward is the birthplace of the komatsuna green and still has one of the leading agricultural outputs in Tokyo, and the total park area became the largest among the twenty-three wards. From a low wetland threatened by water, to a town that controls water and develops the waterside — this ward’s form stands upon the history of a long fight with water.

What characterizes Edogawa-ku is that, while the total population rose by nearly eighty thousand, the number of children is held above eighty thousand. It appears in the figures of living infrastructure as a quiet stability, the opposite of the consolidation common to regional cities where population has greatly fallen. The elementary schools within the ward fell from 72 to 67, about five, but it keeps holding a receiver of one of the largest pupil counts among the twenty-three wards.

The Childcare Waitlist has moved at zero. Its meaning is the opposite of the zero of “the result of the absolute number of children thinning,” common to regional cities in population decline. While children are held above eighty thousand and the total population too keeps rising, it is 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 thinning behind it, or eighty thousand are held. Children are held, aging is gentle, and the waitlist is zero — large wards that keep this much youthfulness among the twenty-three are not many. That the wide lowland has kept receiving people and children appears in the overlap of these three numbers.

Edogawa-ku holds several functions of its own. One is the lowland urban area protected by the artificial river that is the Arakawa floodway and by levees, which houses nearly seven hundred thousand people while including a below-sea-level zone. Another is the waterfront reclaimed and developed by the Kasai offshore development project, where, beginning with Kasai Rinkai Park opened there, the ward’s total park area became the largest among the twenty-three wards. Further, as the birthplace of the komatsuna green, the ward still keeps one of the leading agricultural outputs in Tokyo.

In the Edo era, Edogawa-ku, as a low wetland surrounded on three sides by water, opened bit by bit through new-field development. From a low wetland of floods, to an urban area protected by flood control, and further to a town holding a waterfront park born of reclamation — the condition of “lowland edged by water” has carried over different functions era by era. The new fields, the urban area inside the levees, and the waterfront park are all, at root, set upon the same condition — lowland facing water. Holding back water, controlling water, building a waterside — the unending fight with water itself has called in functions one after another.