Hachioji-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 580,000 (579,355 in 2020). It rose from 536,046 in 2000 to 580,053 in 2010, hit a peak, and turned to flat over the following ten years. It is the largest population scale in the Tama region, but its upward trend has already stopped.

Meanwhile the breakdown is quietly shifting. The share aged 65 and over nearly doubled, from 13.9% (2000) to 26.5% (2020), and those under 15 fell from 72,184 to 62,867. Though the total does not move, the contents shift their center of gravity to the elderly side. The land price of residential areas is about 110,000 yen per m² (2026), and the Fiscal Capacity Index is 0.90 (fiscal 2023), a level for a Tama city covering much of expenditure with its own tax revenue. The total alone stops while the contents move — that contrivance falls into place only after following the road by which this town swelled with the post towns of the Koshu Kaido and silk.

The name Hachioji derives from Hachioji Castle, built by Hojo Ujiteru in the Warring States period. Entering the Edo era, it flourished as a post town of the Koshu Kaido, and the fifteen post towns of Hachioji Yokoyama are held to have been the largest post towns of the Koshu Kaido. It was a junction of the highway linking Edo and Kofu, functioning as a relay place where people and goods flowed east and west. The “advantage of the junction (node)” that economic geography speaks of was this town’s first foundation.

Another backbone is sericulture and silk weaving. From the prosperity of the surrounding mulberry fields and the textile market, Hachioji was called the “silk capital.” After the opening of Yokohama in 1859, the Kanagawa highway linking Hachioji and Yokohama was called the “silk road” as an export route for raw silk, and became a junction sending the inland raw silk out to the port. The highway post town carried over its role just so to a collection-and-dispersal place for the raw silk trade.

After that, the Chuo Main Line, the Yokohama Line, and the Hachiko Line crossed, the starting station of the Keio Line too was placed, and Hachioji Station became a railway junction. After the war, housing-land conversion advanced as a commuting zone to central Tokyo, the face of a student town where universities, junior colleges, and technical colleges gather was added, and the population swelled to the five-hundred-thousand level. Yet the contraction of the textile industry, and the city center becoming “close” by railway, work on a junction town in two ways. The geography of the western edge of Tama makes a ceiling on the supply of housing land, and links to the flat trend from the 2000s on.

What characterizes Hachioji is that, while the total population hardly moves, the breakdown alone is shifting. It appears in the figures of living infrastructure in a form different from the abrupt consolidation common to regional cities where population has greatly fallen. The elementary schools within the city moved nearly flat, from 72 (2000) to 69 (2023). The number of children itself is decreasing, but the scale of five hundred eighty thousand keeps supporting the school network.

The Childcare Waitlist has, rather, increased in recent years. From 15 (2024) to 24 (2025). The opposite direction to many regional cities where the absolute number of children thins, it shows that demand from households raising children still remains as a commuting zone to the city center, and that there are local phases where supply has not kept up. Taxable income per taxpayer too rose from 217,000 yen (in thousands, 2000) to 274,000 yen (in thousands, 2023). Even though the total stops, the number of schools, the waitlist, and income each move in their own direction. To dismiss it as a “town that does not move,” looking only at the total of five hundred eighty thousand, is to drop wholesale the aging, the rise of income, and the tension of childcare demand advancing inside it.

Hachioji still keeps functions of its own. Hachioji Station is a railway junction where the Chuo Main Line, the Yokohama Line, and the Hachiko Line cross, with the starting station of the Keio Line close by, and people pass to and fro toward both the city center and the Yamanashi direction. In April 2015 it shifted to a core city. This is the only core city in Tokyo excluding the twenty-three wards, meaning that the city holds, on its own, administrative authority on the level of a prefecture, such as the establishment of a public-health center.

In the city area, universities, junior colleges, and technical colleges gather, and it is also a student town where many students study. From a castle town to a post town, a collection-and-dispersal place for silk, a railway junction, and a student town — the property of “east-west flows crossing in the west of Tama” has carried over different vessels of industry era by era. Even after the highway and silk finished their roles, the property itself of people and goods crossing remained and called in the next function. The castle town of Hachioji Castle, the silk market of the silk capital, and the present university town are the faces this place where flows cross has drawn in era by era.