Kamakura-shi

In the most recent Population Census the population is about 173,000 (172,710 in 2020). Over the twenty years from 167,583 in 2000 it rose by only about five thousand, all but pinned flat. In the same twenty years in which Yokohama added 350,000 and Yokosuka lost 40,000, Kamakura neither rose nor fell, holding its scale almost unchanged.

Behind that, the makeup shifts its weight to the older side. Those under 15 edged up slightly, from 18,590 (2000) to 19,587 (2020), but the share aged 65 and over rose from 21.2% to 30.9%, so roughly one resident in three is now elderly. The residential land price is in the 219,000-yen-per-m² range (2026), high against neighboring cities. And what most draws the eye is the Fiscal Capacity Index: 1.08 in FY2023 — exceeding 1.0 means it can cover standard expenditure on its own tax revenue alone, one of few cases nationwide. The childcare waitlist fell from 34 children (2024) to 9 (2025). Why it takes this shape cannot be read without going back to the origin of the ancient capital and the terrain ringed by mountains on three sides.

Kamakura’s town was made by its terrain being chosen. At the end of the twelfth century, Minamoto no Yoritomo opened a shogunate here as the seat of warrior government. Ringed by mountains on east, west and north, open only to Sagami Bay on the south, the Ougigayatsu (fan-valley) terrain was chosen as the warrior capital for being a stronghold suited to defense. What historical geography calls “path dependence set by terrain” was this town’s first foundation. The same terrain goes on acting in later ages too, as the constraint that blocks of flat land are scarce.

After the shogunate fell, Kamakura withdrew for a time from the main stage of history, but transformed its character on entering the modern era. In 1889 the Yokosuka Line, linking Tokyo with the naval port of Yokosuka, came through, and as a point on its route Kamakura opened rapidly as a sightseeing and villa district close to Tokyo. Members of the imperial family and the nobility, and leading figures of politics and business, built villas, and a tourism industry serving them grew up. Onto the accumulation of an ancient capital was layered the face of a villa and sightseeing district brought by the railway.

Then in 1939, Kamakura Town and Koshigoe Town merged and the city system was instituted. In the postwar high-growth period, residential development pressed in to fill the limited flat land, and in 1964 the Oyatsu dispute arose — a residents’ movement opposing housing development on the hill behind Tsurugaoka Hachimangu (Oyatsu). This movement, which bought up the land by fundraising, is regarded as Japan’s first National Trust, and became the occasion for enacting the Ancient Capitals Preservation Law in 1966. The historic landscape of an ancient capital set by terrain turned the law and the movement to its protecting side.

What characterizes Kamakura is that the population is nearly flat and the number of children even slightly up. That surfaces in the living-infrastructure figures in a form unlike either the consolidation common to depopulating regional cities or the additions of a Saitama. Elementary schools in the city have held steady at nineteen. In a town where the number of children moves little, the school network too neither rises nor falls, held at the same count.

The childcare waitlist fell sharply, from 34 children (2024) to 9 (2025). In a town where the number of children is slightly rising, the waitlist surfaces not as “the result of a thinned absolute number of children” but as a tug-of-war over whether supply catches up with demand. The swing of shrinking from thirty-four to nine in a single year may show movement on the side of increasing childcare supply. That said, where flat land is limited, securing sites for childcare facilities is also liable to constraint, and the rise and fall of the waitlist mirror both the supply side’s circumstances and the constraint of terrain. The numbers are a mirror that reflects structure, not good or bad.

Kamakura keeps functions of its own. One is the accumulation of history as the birthplace of warrior government eight hundred years ago, where shrines and temples beginning with Tsurugaoka Hachimangu, and a historic landscape uniting the mountains on three sides with the sea, are protected under the Ancient Capitals Preservation Law. Another is the face of a sightseeing and residential district linked to Tokyo by the Yokosuka Line, the origin as a villa district remaining still in the height of land prices.

What symbolizes this town on the side of the numbers is the Fiscal Capacity Index of 1.08. Exceeding 1.0 means covering standard expenditure on own tax revenue alone, without relying on the local allocation tax, and it surfaces as one consequence of being a residential city with high land prices and income levels. From the warrior capital, to the villa and sightseeing district the railway brought, and on to a residential city that can run its town on its own — the terrain and history of an ancient capital ringed by mountains on three sides have carried different functions era by era, while holding all along the constraint that flat land is scarce. The Oyatsu dispute and the Ancient Capitals Preservation Law can be called the one point that turned that constraint to its protecting side.