Komatsu-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 106,000 (106,216 in 2020). This city’s population is not a step from a large merger; it struck a gentle peak at 109,084 in 2005 from 108,622 in 2000, and through 108,433 in 2010 and 106,919 in 2015 to 106,216 in 2020, it has moved within a nearly flat band over twenty years, edging slightly downward. It is the curve of a town opening onto the Sea of Japan that has not greatly broken.

Looking inside the figures, the figure of a Hokuriku city appears. The share aged 65 and over is 28.7% in 2020, drawing near three in ten, and the household-with-children share is high at 23.4%. The Childcare Waitlist was zero in both 2024 and 2025. The Fiscal Capacity Index was 0.65 in fiscal 2023 — a level whose own tax revenue covers a little over six-tenths of expenditure. The numbers show the town of construction machinery and the Kanjincho gently declining while nearly holding its population, and keeping the household-with-children share high. Why it takes this shape cannot be read without going back over the history of the copper mine and construction machinery.

What makes Komatsu up is the mine of the Kaga Plain and the geography of a gateway to the Sea of Japan. In 1917 an ironworks attached to the Yusenji copper mine of this land rose. It became independent in 1921 as Komatsu Ltd. — the origin of Komatsu, the construction machinery that now digs earth on construction sites around the world. In 1932 it developed Japan’s first domestically made tractor, and the town of mine machinery grew, in time, into a town that gives birth to the world’s construction machinery. It is, in economic geography, a typical case of a global company rising from the attached factory of a single mine, an industrial agglomeration.

In that town there remains one more old history. At Ataka, facing the Sea of Japan, there is said to have stood the Barrier of Ataka, known from the legend of Minamoto no Yoshitsune and Benkei. Benkei, disguised as a mountain ascetic, reads out a blank scroll as a subscription list (kanjincho) and deceives the barrier keeper to let his lord escape — it is the setting of the Kabuki classic “Kanjincho.” In Komatsu, at the Otabi Festival, the children’s Kabuki of the float, with a history of more than two hundred and fifty years, is performed, and the memory of the town of the Kanjincho is carried on.

And in modern times, a hub of aviation on the Sea of Japan side was added. Komatsu Airport, with its origin in a former Imperial Navy base, became a Self-Defense Forces base in 1961 after the lifting of the postwar requisition, and in 1962 regular civilian flights began — an airport in joint civil–military use. Beginning with the ironworks of a copper mine, becoming a town that gives birth to the world’s construction machinery, holding the barrier of the Kanjincho, and having a hub of the sky on the Sea of Japan side — the history that the Kaga Plain and the Sea of Japan set lies at the foundation of today’s Komatsu.

What characterizes Komatsu-shi is that, while many regional cities lose population heavily, it has held its population nearly flat over twenty years. Edging slightly downward, it keeps to the range of one hundred thousand, and the household-with-children share is high at 23.4%. This can be read as an expression of how manufacturing, with Komatsu — the construction machinery that develops across the world — at its core, still gives stable places to work and has held young households to the town. That the Childcare Waitlist was zero in both 2024 and 2025 is also the obverse of the receiving capacity for working households being held.

On the other hand, the Fiscal Capacity Index stays at 0.65 — a level whose own tax revenue covers a little over six-tenths of expenditure. That it is this number while holding a global company can be considered to owe to the company’s head-office functions, the weight of its production, and its position within the mechanism of the allocation tax; it can also be read as mirroring the point that an agglomeration of firms does not directly link to a high fiscal capacity. The population gently declines yet keeps to the range of one hundred thousand, households with children are many, and yet the stamina of finances stays in the middle range — that a town holding a global company puts out its numbers so calmly is the figure of Komatsu opening onto the Sea of Japan. Watch only the name of Komatsu and one fails to read the plain number of a fiscal capacity of 0.65.

Komatsu holds several functions of its own. One is the history of being the birthplace of Komatsu, the construction machinery that rose from the ironworks of the Yusenji copper mine, with its industrial origin of a global company growing from the attached factory of a single mine. Another is the Barrier of Ataka, said to be the setting of the Kanjincho, which keeps the memory of the tale carried on in the children’s Kabuki of the float, with more than two hundred and fifty years of history. And Komatsu Airport, in joint civil–military use, gives this town the face of a hub of the sky on the Sea of Japan side.

Komatsu is a town that gave birth to a global company from a copper mine. From the ironworks of the Yusenji copper mine, to a town that gives birth to the world’s construction machinery, to a land holding the barrier of the Kanjincho — the geography of “opening onto the Kaga Plain and facing the Sea of Japan” called forth the mine, construction machinery, and a hub of sea and sky. A global company grew from the ironworks of a single copper mine, and the barrier of the Kanjincho is still told and handed down. Komatsu, opening onto the Sea of Japan, is a town that has layered such a history.