Zama-shi

In the 2020 Population Census the population is 132,325. From 125,694 in 2000 it added some six thousand over twenty years, holding a gentle upward trend amid the many regional cities that keep losing people.

What is worth seeing here is that, while the total population rises, the number of children keeps falling. Those under 15 fell from 18,964 (2000) to 14,957 (2020), some four thousand fewer over twenty years. The share aged 65 and over rose from 10.9% (2000) to 25.4% (2020), more than doubling in twenty years. Households with children make up 18.4% (2020). The number of elementary schools has long held at eleven. The childcare waitlist remains in the twenties in recent years, short of zero. The Fiscal Capacity Index was 0.83 in FY2023. The total population rising while children fall and aging advances — the figure of a suburban residential city heading toward maturity shows in its numbers. Why it takes this shape cannot be read without going back to the plateau’s origins.

Zama’s skeleton is set by a history in which the military and the factory placed upon the plateau have changed places over time. In 1937 the army’s military academy, until then in Ichigaya in Tokyo, was moved to this plateau. The wide, flat land became the vessel that received the military facility. That a military facility was placed on the plateau was the first event of this town.

That facility changed its character through the war. When the Pacific War ended, the site of the military academy was requisitioned by the U.S. forces, and later a U.S. Army headquarters was placed there and it came to be called “Camp Zama.” The military facility shifted, at the boundary of defeat, from the Japanese military to that of the stationed U.S. forces. The plateau’s wide land continued to be used as a military facility.

And on another wide stretch of that plateau, an automobile plant was built. On the plateau in the city’s east, an automaker’s Zama plant located, forming one quarter of manufacturing. But after the collapse of the bubble economy, the automobile plant withdrew, and its share of tax revenue and employment was lost. Meanwhile, a position about forty kilometers from the center pushed Zama up into a suburban residential city, and in 1971 it moved from town to city. Beginning with the plateau of the military academy, holding a U.S. facility and an automobile plant, and gathering people as a residential city even after the plant departed — this town’s shape stands on a plateau where the military, the factory, and housing have changed places.

What characterizes Zama is that, while the total population keeps rising gently, the number of children keeps falling. A position about forty kilometers from the center drew in households commuting to the center and pushed up the total population. Meanwhile, as the generation that moved in early grows older, and the weight of the child-rearing generation falls even among newly arriving households, the absolute number of children falls, and the aging rate more than doubled in twenty years. The total population’s rise and the children’s fall advance at once — the shape of a suburban residential city heading toward maturity.

The living-infrastructure figures mirror this transition too. The elementary schools have long held at eleven, not reaching consolidation even as children fall. That the childcare waitlist remains in the twenties in recent years reads as a sign that, even as the absolute number of children falls, the childcare demand of dual-income households commuting to the center continues. It is a form peculiar to the urban fringe, in which the number of children thins while the demand to place a child stays stubbornly. The town that began with the plateau of the military academy, held a U.S. facility and an automobile plant, and gathered people even after the plant departed, now increases its total population while lowering the weight of the child-rearing generation and heading toward maturity. Look only at the rise in the total and it appears a town of vigor; look only at the children’s fall and it appears a town that shrinks — overlay the two, and only then does the present of a maturing suburban residential city come into view.

Zama holds several functions of its own. One is the postwar land-use character of Camp Zama, which occupies one quarter of the city area and conveys to the present the origin by which the site of Tokyo’s military academy was handed on to a U.S. facility. Another is the plateau where an automobile plant once located and later withdrew, holding the origin of manufacturing and the change in tax revenue and employment its withdrawal brought. And a position about forty kilometers from the center supports Zama as a suburban residential city.

Zama is a town on a plateau where the military, the factory, and housing have changed places. From the military academy moved from Tokyo, to a U.S. facility, to an automobile plant and its withdrawal, and on to residential land of households commuting to the center — the wide, flat plateau received, one after another, both the military facility and the factory; that geography made the changing of land use itself into the town’s making. Upon the natural geography of the Sagami River’s river terrace, the land uses of military, factory, and housing have changed places many times over. From the military academy to a U.S. facility, to an automobile plant and its withdrawal, and on to residential land of households commuting to the center — the wide, flat plateau has gone on silently receiving the role of each turn.