Ebina-shi

In the 2020 Population Census the population is 136,516. From 117,519 in 2000 it added about twenty thousand over twenty years, showing a rate of growth high even within the prefecture.

What is worth seeing here is that, while the population rises, the number of children holds nearly steady. Those under 15 held nearly flat, from 17,159 (2000) to 17,660 (2020). The share aged 65 and over rose over the same period from 10.7% to 24.8%, though gently among the country’s cities. Households with children make up 22.3% (2020). The number of elementary schools has stayed at thirteen for more than twenty years, and the childcare waitlist remains in the dozen-and-some range in recent years, short of zero. The Fiscal Capacity Index reached 1.03 in FY2023, exceeding one — the city can cover its expenditure on its own tax revenue. The figure of a town holding both ever-rising population and self-standing finances shows in its numbers. Why it takes this shape cannot be read without going back to the origins of the ancient center and the railways.

Ebina’s skeleton is set with a new modern layer — the railways — laid over an old layer, an ancient center. In the Nara period, the Sagami Provincial Temple (kokubunji) was placed on this ground. A seven-story pagoda is said to have risen, and Ebina was one of the political and cultural centers of ancient Sagami. Afterward the center’s function moved elsewhere, and this stretch became a farming district of rice paddies on the flatland the Sagami River brought — long enduring as what was called the Ebina cropland.

What decided the town’s character was the three modern railways. In 1926 the Jinchu Railway (today’s Sagami Railway) and, the next year in 1927, the Odawara Express Railway (today’s Odakyu) opened in succession, and in 1941 a joint Ebina Station where both lines crossed opened. Further, in 1987 the Ebina Station of the JR Sagami Line opened, completing a junction where three railways cross at a single point. In the midst of farmland, a station arose where rails extending in three directions gathered — what economic geography calls the locational advantage that a transport node brings worked here.

This junction changed the farmland into a station-front town. In 2002 the complex commercial facility Vina Walk and, in 2015, a large shopping mall opened in front of the station, and the farmland of the Ebina cropland changed its form into one of central Kanagawa’s foremost gatherings of commerce in front of a station. The Sagami Provincial Temple was placed, it long endured as farmland, and three railways crossed to make a station-front town — this town’s shape stands on the origins of two centralities, an ancient center and modern railways.

What characterizes Ebina is that, though its population keeps rising at a level high even within the prefecture, the number of children holds nearly steady. Those under 15 hold in the seventeen-thousand range across twenty years, neither rising nor greatly falling. What is rising is mainly the town’s overall population, including households that have finished child-rearing and single-person households, it reads.

The living-infrastructure figures mirror this stability too. The city’s elementary schools have not moved from thirteen for more than twenty years; in this town, where the number of children does not crumble, the school network has not swayed at all. That the childcare waitlist stays in the dozen-and-some range, short of zero, is not a consequence of children thinning out, but reads as a figure on the side where supply cannot quite catch up with demand amid a continuing inflow toward the station front. A Fiscal Capacity Index of 1.03 shows that the commerce gathered in front of the station, and the tax revenue rising from the households who work and live there, hold thickness enough to cover expenditure. People and commerce gather at a station front where three railways cross, and the town swells while holding the number of children — this overlay shapes Ebina’s present numbers. The dozen-and-some waitlist, too, reads as not a consequence of children thinning only when the population growth and the inflow toward the station front are set beside it.

Ebina holds several functions of its own. One is the junction where three railways — the Odakyu, the Sotetsu, and the JR Sagami Line — cross at a single point, a transport pivot reaching radially from central Kanagawa toward the center, Yokohama, and the Chigasaki direction. Another is the cluster of commercial facilities gathered in front of that station, which changed the Ebina cropland, once farmland, into one of central Kanagawa’s foremost commercial districts. And the Sagami Provincial Temple ruins, where a provincial temple was placed in the Nara period, convey to the present the origin of this ground as the center of ancient Sagami.

Ebina is a town where an ancient center was reborn as a modern railway junction. From the ancient provincial temple, to the farmland of the Ebina cropland, and on to a station front where three railways cross — the condition of “three railways crossing at a single point on the flatland of the Sagami River” changed the farmland into a station-front town. Upon the flatland that natural geography brought, the man-made railway set down a junction and rewrote the farmland into a station-front town. The centrality that placed a provincial temple in antiquity, and the centrality that drew three railways in the modern era. Two “centers” differing in character overlaid, across the eras, upon the same flatland of the Sagami River.