Chigasaki-shi

In the most recent Population Census the population is about 242,000 (242,389 in 2020). Over the five years from 239,348 in 2015 it added some three thousand. It is a city that has gently grown its people on the Kanagawa coast.

What is worth seeing here is that, behind a rising total, the number of children is falling. Those under 15 fell from 32,593 (2015) to 31,061 (2020), some fifteen hundred fewer. Over the same period the share aged 65 and over rose from 24.9% to 26.8%. Two flows run at once — the total rising gently while the makeup shifts its weight toward the older side. Meanwhile, households with children make up 22.4% (2020), a level on the thicker side among Kanagawa’s cities. The residential land price is in the 208,000-yen-per-m² range, on the higher side even within the Shonan area compared with cities set more inland. The Fiscal Capacity Index is 0.90, a level able to cover much of its expenditure on its own tax revenue. The childcare waitlist fell from 9 children (2024) to 0 (2025). Why these figures take this shape cannot be read without going back to the origins of the station and the villa district.

Chigasaki’s skeleton is the very character of a resort that a single railway brought. Originally this whole stretch was mild seaside cropland facing Sagami Bay. When Chigasaki Station was established in 1898, the town’s character changed greatly. It is a textbook case, in the terms of economic geography, of a transport node afterward summoning the uses of the land.

From about the time the station’s establishment was decided, villas began to be built around it. Seeking the mild climate and the seaside scenery, cultured figures, businesspeople, and even foreign residents built villas on this ground. Chigasaki came to be known as a villa and resort district close to the center. What tourism economics calls “the formation of a resort with climate and scenery as its resource” was this town’s first foundation. The origin of having opened as a villa and resort district was handed down, even amid the rapid postwar urbanization, as the character of a seaside residential city.

In 1947 Chigasaki instituted the city system as the eighth city in Kanagawa Prefecture. The town of villas and recreation changed its form into a residential city linked by rail to the center, and in 1989 its population passed two hundred thousand. Then in 1999 the shore was renamed “Southern Beach Chigasaki,” a name taken from a music group with ties to this ground — a form in which the origin as a seaside resort was tied again into the town’s present image. A station set down on seaside cropland, a town of villas and recreation, grown into a residential city — this town’s shape stands on two conditions, the seaside geography and the railway.

What characterizes Chigasaki is that, while the total population rose by three thousand, the number of children fell by fifteen hundred. While it holds the origin of having gathered young households as a seaside residential city, it has now entered a stage where a slight rise in the total and a slight fall in children advance at once. The share aged 65 and over has passed a quarter, and the household-with-children rate stays at 22.4%. Unlike the clear population decline of a Yokosuka, the total holds its growth while the generational makeup quietly shifts upward.

Even so, the childcare waitlist vanished in a single year, from 9 children (2024) to 0 (2025). A reading shift is needed here. This is not the zero of a depopulating regional city, “a consequence of the absolute number of children thinning greatly.” It reads, rather, as a zero reached by having supply catch up with demand even as children gently fall. Children falling little by little, aging advancing, yet the supply-demand of childcare moving toward balance — these several flows advancing at once are the figures of a mature Shonan residential city. The fact that child-rearing households remain on the thicker side and the fact that the absolute number of children is falling coexist without contradiction. Take out the household-with-children rate alone, or the zero waitlist alone, and you mistake the image — overlay the two, and only then does the present of a Shonan residential city moving toward maturity come into view.

Chigasaki holds several characters of its own. One is its origin as a seaside resort facing Sagami Bay; the origin of having opened as a villa and resort district is handed down in the present form of a residential city along the shore. Another is the railway axis linking the center, for the establishment of the station itself summoned the character of resort and residential land to this town. Further, the shore itself, as “Southern Beach Chigasaki,” ties into the name of a music group with ties to this ground, supporting the town’s outward image.

Chigasaki is a town where, because a railway was drawn, cropland turned into a villa district, and the villa district grew into a residential city. From seaside cropland to a resort, and on to a residential city — the condition of “a mild seaside close to the center” has carried differing characters era by era. The villas, the resort and the residential land all rest, in the end, on the same site — a mild seaside close to the center. That site of a mild seaside close to the center summoned, one after another, the uses. Even within the same Kanagawa, the way the town came to be stands just opposite to Sagamihara, which was carved out artificially by the military, the bases and planning.