Mitaka-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 195,000 (195,391 in 2020). Over the five years from 186,936 in 2015, it gained more than eight thousand. It has extended its population as a Tama city close to the city center.

What I want to note here is that even the number of children is increasing. Those under 15 rose from 22,255 (2015) to 23,468 (2020), more than twelve hundred. Cities where the absolute number of children is increasing are not many even looking across the nation. In the same span the share aged 65 and over rose only slightly, from 20.8% to 21.3%. Total population and children both increase, and the pace of aging is gentle too — multiple indicators align toward the upward-trend side. The household-with-children share is 18.2% (2020). The land price of residential areas is about 445,000 yen per m² (445,000 yen/m² in 2026), a high level befitting the city-center suburb. The Fiscal Capacity Index is 1.13 (2023), exceeding 1.0 — a self-sustaining fiscal structure covering standard expenditure with its own tax revenue alone without relying on the local allocation tax. The Childcare Waitlist is 0 (2025). Why, in a Tama city, children increase and fiscal capacity exceeds 1.0 does not come into view without going back to the Tamagawa Josui that moistened the throat of Edo and the Chuo Line that ran through later.

Mitaka’s skeleton is the history of two lines — a waterway and a railway — drawn through a Musashino farming village, where people then settled. Originally this area was a farming district of dry-field cultivation on the Musashino plateau. There the first line was drawn. In 1653, the Tamagawa Josui was dug as Edo’s aqueduct, and a waterway carrying the water of the Tama River to Edo ran through this land east to west. The water infrastructure supporting the life of Edo passed right through the middle of the farming village.

The second line that decided its fate is the railway. In 1930, Mitaka Station of the government line (Chuo Line) opened. With a station directly linked to the city center, the Musashino farming village began to change into a suburb close to the city center. And what gave this town its distinctive color was cultured people. In the affordable, quiet suburb along the Chuo Line, writers and editors settled, and Dazai Osamu spent seven and a half years here from 1939 to his last years. The banks of the Tamagawa Josui came to be known as the stage of that literature. On “the spread of residence to the suburb linked to the city center by railway” that economic geography speaks of, the color of the dense settling of cultured people overlapped.

The town, which enacted city status in 1950, advanced housing-land conversion as a commuting zone to the city center after the war too. And in 2001, the vision of Mitaka City and the Studio Ghibli side aligned, and the Ghibli Museum, Mitaka — Japan’s first animation museum — was opened along the Tamagawa Josui. A waterway and a railway were drawn through a farming village, cultured people lived, and a cultural facility was set — this town’s form stands upon the history of residence and culture layered upon the two lines.

What characterizes Mitaka-shi is that, while the total population rose by more than eight thousand, even the number of children rose by more than twelve hundred. It appears in the figures of living infrastructure in a form opposite to the decrease of children as in Suzuka or Higashi-hiroshima. 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 childcare and schools too moves to the increasing side.

The Childcare Waitlist is 0 (2025), and the household-with-children share is 18.2% (2020). 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 self-sustaining fiscal structure exceeding 1.0 supports the supply to the ever-rising childcare demand. Even with the same “waitlist of 0,” the reading changes entirely depending on whether children are increasing or thinning behind it. Children increase, aging is gentle too, and the waitlist is held at zero. Precisely because a Tama city close to the city center has kept gathering young households, these indicators step in line toward the upward trend.

Mitaka-shi holds several functions of its own. One is the Tamagawa Josui, dug as Edo’s aqueduct and still flowing east to west through the town, which remains as the stage of literature beginning with Dazai Osamu and as a green waterside. Another is the commuting axis to the city center starting from Mitaka Station of the Chuo Line, supporting its character as a suburb close to the city center. Further, the Ghibli Museum, Mitaka, opened along the Tamagawa Josui, makes known across the nation its face as a town of culture.

Mitaka is a town where two lines — a waterway and a railway — were drawn through a Musashino farming village, and residence and culture were layered. The Tamagawa Josui, Mitaka Station, the dwellings of cultured people, and the Ghibli Museum are, at root, set over the ages upon the same condition — a land of Musashino close to the city center. Two lines — a waterway carrying the water of Edo, and a railway heading to the city center — have called in residence and culture one after another. The aqueduct of the Joo era and the railway of the Showa era, two lines drawn nearly three hundred years apart, now bundle together the living, literature, and animation of the same town.