Fuchu-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 263,000 (262,790 in 2020). Over the five years from 260,274 in 2015, it gained about twenty-five hundred. It is a city that has kept on the rising side even within the Tama region.

What I want to note here is that the numbers of children and of finances point in different directions. Those under 15 fell from 34,287 (2015) to 32,986 (2020), about thirteen hundred over five years. Behind the rise in total population, the absolute number of children is thinning slightly. In the same span, the share aged 65 and over rose from 20.6% to 21.6%, placing it, as a city of Tama, on the gentle side of aging. The household-with-children share is 19.6% (2020). The land price of residential areas is about 369,500 yen per m², a high level within the Tama region. The Fiscal Capacity Index is 1.21, exceeding 1.0 — a number showing a self-standing fiscal structure that covers standard expenditure with its own tax revenue alone, without relying on the local allocation tax. The Childcare Waitlist rose from 0 (2024) to 13 (2025). That the waitlist rises while the total number of children gently thins shows that the movement of the layer seeking enrollment, and the arrangement of supply, do not move in simple proportion to population. That fiscal capacity, at 1.21, stands out so high for a city of Tama — its root reaches all the way back to a centrality thirteen hundred years old, when the provincial office of Musashi Province was placed on this land.

Fuchu’s skeleton begins with the memory of an office placed in antiquity. In the ritsuryo period of the Nara era, the provincial office of the vast Musashi Province — which included nearly all of present-day Saitama Prefecture and parts of Tokyo and Kanagawa — was placed on this land. The place name “Fuchu” is itself this very origin, pointing to the seat of the provincial office. It is an extremely old example, in historical geography, of “a city set as an administrative center.”

At the provincial office, the Okunitama Shrine was placed as the chief shrine of Musashi Province, and it became the center of Musashi faith, jointly enshrining the province’s principal deities. In the early modern era, the Koshu Kaido ran through, and as the Fuchu-juku holding the provincial office and the chief shrine, it took on the role of a post town along the highway. The center of administration, the center of faith, the post town of the highway — from antiquity to the early modern era, Fuchu remained a “center” where people and authority gathered. This long centrality is this town’s first foundation.

From the modern era on, new functions were layered upon the center. In 1933, the Meguro Racecourse, grown cramped with urbanization, chose Fuchu’s landform and transferred there, and the Tokyo Racecourse opened. There is a history of Fuchu town itself working to attract it. After the war, the site of the adjacent Chofu airfield was requisitioned by the U.S. military, and from 1963 a tract equipped with housing and schools was used as the Kanto Mura housing district, where U.S. servicemen and their families lived. Then in 1974 this housing district was fully returned to the nation. Upon the old centrality of provincial office, chief shrine, and post town were laid the large modern facilities of racecourse and returned site — Fuchu’s map stands upon a long history as a center.

What characterizes Fuchu-shi is that, while the total population increases, the number of children thins slightly, and the waitlist moved within a single year. It appears in the figures of living infrastructure in an entangled form — neither the consolidation common to regional cities of population decline, nor the rising trend of a neighboring city of Tama. Those under 15 fell by about thirteen hundred over five years, but the total population rose by twenty-five hundred. While the absolute number of children gently thins, people keep entering the town as a whole — two directions run at once.

The Childcare Waitlist rose from 0 (2024) to 13 (2025). That the waitlist rises while the total number of children gently thins shows that the movement of the layer seeking enrollment, and the arrangement of supply, do not move in simple proportion to population. That a waitlist appears even though the absolute number of children is falling can be read as there being phases where, in particular areas or ages, demand exceeds supply. Children thin slightly, aging is gentle, yet the waitlist moves within a single year from zero to the double digits — in this center of Tama where such movements proceed at once, the waitlist swings by a logic separate from the total population.

Fuchu-shi holds, upon a long history as a center, several functions of its own. One is its character as a center since antiquity, where the provincial office of Musashi Province was placed in the Nara era and which holds the chief shrine of Musashi, the Okunitama Shrine, with the place name itself conveying the seat of the provincial office. Another is the Tokyo Racecourse, transferred in 1933, and the returned site of U.S. military housing — large facilities laid on in the modern era. Further, the memory of the Fuchu-juku as a post town of the Koshu Kaido remains in the skeleton of the urban area.

Fuchu has layered its roles as a center — from the ancient provincial capital, to the gate-front of the chief shrine, the post town of the highway, the racecourse, and the returned site. The provincial office, the chief shrine, the racecourse, and the returned site are all, at root, set across the ages upon the same property — “a center where people and authority gather.” That the provincial office of Musashi Province was placed on this land thirteen hundred years ago — that single point called in the chief shrine, called in the post town, called in the racecourse and the returned site. The memory of an ancient office still serves as the starting point of Tama’s centrality.