Kodaira-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 199,000 (198,739 in 2020). From 178,623 in 2000, it gained roughly twenty thousand over twenty years and still keeps a gentle rising trend.

What I want to note here is that the number of children has not crumbled. Those under 15 went from 24,420 in 2000 to 25,072 in 2020 — held nearly steady over twenty years. Among the many cities where children greatly thin over a twenty-year unit, this is a rarely stable form. In the same span, the share aged 65 and over rose from 14.4% to 22.7%, but compared with cities nationwide it is at a gentle level. The household-with-children share is 20.0% (2020). The elementary schools have stayed nearly unmoved at twenty-one for more than twenty years, the Childcare Waitlist is zero in recent years, and the Fiscal Capacity Index was 0.92 in fiscal 2023. The figure of a suburban city of high self-standing, covering about nine-tenths of expenditure with its own tax revenue, shows in the numbers. Why children do not thin even after twenty years — the answer does not come out without going back to a single line, the Tamagawa Josui, dug to carry water to Edo.

Kodaira’s skeleton is set, first, by a single artificial waterway. Around the Joo era (1653–54), to carry the water of the Tama River to Edo, whose population had surged, the Tamagawa Josui was excavated, running about forty-three kilometers from Hamura to Yotsuya Okido. This waterway flows east to west over the Musashino plateau, piercing nearly the center of the present Kodaira city area. Not a natural river, but a line drawn to send water to Edo, became this town’s foundation.

Along that waterway, fields were opened. The Tamagawa Josui and the irrigation channels branching from it supplied water, and the wilds of Musashino were opened as new fields. Early-modern Kodaira was a tract of dry-field farming thus opened, and a rural scene of settlements lined thinly along the channels long continued. The waterway came first, and people and fields were drawn to it — this is this town’s starting point.

What greatly changed the town’s character was the postwar period of high growth. As a receiver for the severe housing shortage of the city-center districts, the construction of metropolitan housing and housing complexes advanced on this plateau of little relief, and private housing-land development spread as well. Around the same time, factories of firms such as Bridgestone and Hitachi sited themselves, and both the place to live and the place to work moved to the suburb. Kodaira, which had been rural, thus changed its form into a residential city in the commuting zone to the twenty-three wards. Beginning with a waterway sending water to Edo, with fields opened along the channels, and after the war with housing complexes and factories lined up — this town’s form stands upon the artificial line of the Tamagawa Josui.

What characterizes Kodaira-shi is that, while the population gained roughly twenty thousand over twenty years, the number of children has not crumbled. Those under 15 went from 24,420 in 2000 to 25,072 in 2020 — held nearly steady over twenty years. Among the many cities where children greatly thin over a twenty-year unit, this is a rarely stable form. It can be read as an expression of the housing complexes and residential land of the postwar period spreading on the Musashino plateau of little relief, and households raising children staying in a certain measure.

In the same span, the share aged 65 and over rose from 14.4% to 22.7%, but compared with cities nationwide it is at a gentle level. The elementary schools have stayed nearly unmoved at twenty-one for more than twenty years, and the Childcare Waitlist is zero in recent years. A Fiscal Capacity Index of 0.92 is the level of a suburban city of high self-standing, covering about nine-tenths of expenditure with its own tax revenue. The total population gained twenty thousand, the number of children is held nearly steady, and aging proceeds gently. Over the time of twenty years, while population rises and aging proceeds, only the number of children has stayed put without crumbling.

Kodaira, as a town opening on the Musashino plateau of little relief, holds several functions of its own. One is the Tamagawa Josui piercing the city area east to west; the waterway drawn to send water to Edo is now, linking the Tamagawa Josui green path and the Nobidome irrigation channel, the “Kodaira Green Road” — a walking path of water and green that circles the city over about twenty-one kilometers. Another is the housing complexes and housing land lined up in the postwar suburbanization, and the factories of Bridgestone, Hitachi, and others, which support its character as a suburban city holding both the place to live and the place to work.

Kodaira is a suburban residential area grown upon the line a single aqueduct drew. From the Tamagawa Josui carrying water to Edo, to the new fields along that waterway, the postwar housing complexes and factories, and the channel that became a green walking path — the landform of “the Musashino plateau of little relief” drew the waterway, opened the new fields, and spread the housing complexes. A single waterway dug to send water to Edo changed its form, more than three hundred years later, into a path that circles the city. Along that line, the new fields, the housing complexes, the factories, and the present residential land all line up. The channel drawn as Edo’s aqueduct nourished farming, nourished dwelling, and now moistens the feet of those who walk.