Musashino-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 150,000 (150,149 in 2020). Over the five years from 144,730 in 2015, it gained more than five thousand. It is one of the few cities in Tama extending its population in an already mature municipal area.

What I want to note here is that even the number of children is increasing. Those under 15 rose from 16,237 (2015) to 17,232 (2020), nearly a thousand in five years. Cities where the absolute number of children increases are not many even looking across the nation. In the same span the share aged 65 and over fell ever so slightly, from 21.3% to 21.1%. That the share is leveling off amid the nationwide flow of advancing aging is also a characteristic. The household-with-children share is 16.7% (2020). The land price of residential areas is about 630,000 yen per m² (630,500 yen/m² in 2026), a high level even within Tokyo. The Fiscal Capacity Index is 1.51, greatly exceeding 1.0 — a self-sustaining fiscal structure at the highest level even nationwide, covering standard expenditure with its own tax revenue alone without relying on the local allocation tax. The Childcare Waitlist is 0 (2025). A zero waitlist in a town where children increase differs in meaning from the zero in a town where children thin. Why a mature municipal area still increases children and stands the figure of fiscal capacity 1.51, among the foremost in the nation, does not come into view without going back to the migration of people burned out in the Great Fire of Meireki and the Chuo Line that ran through later.

Musashino’s skeleton is a town that began with the migration of burned-out people and was grown by the railway. The place name Kichijoji itself tells this town’s origin. In 1657, the gate-front town of Suwasan Kichijoji in Hongo, Edo, was lost in the Great Fire of Meireki, and people who lost their place to live moved to the present eastern part of Musashino, then still spread with farming land, and opened the land. The town’s name carried the name of the burned temple to the place of migration. It is the emergence of a settlement through migration and reclamation occasioned by a disaster, as historical geography would say.

What changed the fate of this farming land was the railway. In 1889, the Kobu Railway (now the JR Chuo Line) opened the Shinjuku–Tachikawa section, and a stop was placed in Musashino village. In 1899 Kichijoji Station was born. Further, in 1934 the Kichijoji Station of the Teito Electric Railway (now Keio) Inokashira Line opened, and it became a junction where two railways run in. With the railway linking it to the city center, the farming land rapidly turned into residential and commercial land.

The town, which enacted city status in 1947, entered the 1960s and embarked on town planning around Kichijoji Station. A planning proposal was commissioned to the Department of Urban Engineering of the University of Tokyo, and under the mayor of the time, “town-making with high walkability” was conceived. Large commercial facilities were placed on a cross-shaped axis centered on the station, and the skeleton of a commercial district one can walk around was set at this time. From the migration of a burned-out gate-front town, to the opening of the Chuo Line, and to a planned town to walk around — this town stands upon the history of migration, the railway, and town planning.

What characterizes Musashino-shi is that, while the total population rose by five thousand in five years, even the number of children rose by nearly a thousand. It appears in a form opposite both to a regional city where children thin and to a town where consolidation advances with population decline. Close to the city center and directly linked by the Chuo Line, the condition of a suburb has kept gathering young households. In a town where the absolute number of children increases, demand for schools and childcare too moves to the increasing side.

The Childcare Waitlist is 0. A zero waitlist in a town where children keep increasing is the opposite in meaning to the zero of “the result of the absolute number of children thinning,” common to regional cities in population decline. Amid children increasing and population too extending, it is a zero as the result of keeping supply caught up to demand. There is also the aspect that a fiscal capacity greatly exceeding 1.0 supports the supply to the ever-rising childcare demand. Even with the same “zero waitlist,” the reading changes entirely depending on whether children are increasing or thinning behind it. Children increase, the share of the elderly levels off, and the waitlist settles to zero. Only with the history of keeping gathering young households into a fully mature municipal area do these three numbers align in the same direction.

Musashino-shi holds several functions of its own. One is the commercial district around Kichijoji Station, whose skeleton was set as “town-making with high walkability” by the town planning of the 1960s, where large commercial facilities are placed on a cross-shaped axis centered on the station, forming a concentration of commerce one can walk around. Another is the station where two railways — the Chuo Line and the Keio Inokashira Line — meet, setting this town upon the commuting axis linking the city center and Tama. It also has a history of vying, as a town along the Chuo Line, with adjacent Mitaka-shi (13204).

Musashino was opened by the migration of a burned-out gate-front town, linked to the city center by the railway, and arranged as a town to walk around by town planning. From farming land to residential land along the railway, and further to a planned commercial city — the condition of “a land of the Musashino plateau close to the city center” has carried over different functions era by era. The migration of the gate-front town, the railway station, and the planned commercial land are, at root, set upon this location close to the city center. A station came to the farming land opened by people burned out in a great Edo fire, and that station front was arranged in a planned way into a town to walk around. Three accidents and intentions — migration, the railway, and town planning — overlapped, and the present Kichijoji stands.