Fukui-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about two hundred and sixty-two thousand (262,328 in 2020). Over the five years from 265,904 in 2015 it fell by about three thousand six hundred. It is a prefectural capital with its urban area set at the center of the Fukui Plain, in the stage of a slight decline shared by many regional cities across the country.

What I want to note here is that the household-with-children share, at 22.3% (2020), is on the high side for a prefectural capital. Those under 15 fell by a little over a thousand over five years, from 34,073 in 2015 to 33,046 in 2020. In the same span the share aged 65 and over rose from 27.3% to 28.9%. Two flows run at once: the absolute number of children thins, while the thickness of the child-rearing layer within households is held. The land price of residential areas is around 58,000 yen per m² (58,000 yen in 2026). The Fiscal Capacity Index is 0.78 (2023) — it does not reach 1.0, and the shortfall is filled by the local allocation tax within the structure of a regional city. The Childcare Waitlist is 0 (2025). Why these numbers take this shape cannot be read without going back over the history of the castle town and the two near-levelings.

Fukui’s skeleton is a quarter rebuilt after being almost razed twice. It was originally a land called “Kita-no-sho,” and in 1601 Yuki Hideyasu, who had entered Echizen, began building Fukui Castle, taking in Shibata Katsuie’s Kita-no-sho Castle, and completed it in 1606. For some two hundred and seventy years thereafter it was the seat of the Echizen Matsudaira family. It is said that, because the “kita” (north) of “Kita-no-sho” chimed with “defeat” (haiboku), the name was changed to “Fukui” (Fortunate Dwelling) and then to the present “Fukui.” The quarter of the castle town and the siting at the center of the plain were this town’s first foundation.

The second foundation — the one that settled this town’s self-definition — is the two near-levelings. In the 1945 Fukui Air Raid, about ninety-five percent of the urban area was lost by fire. And in 1948, while recovery was still under way, the Fukui Earthquake, of magnitude 7.1 with its epicenter in the Fukui Plain, struck the town, and the rate of total collapse passed eight in ten. The experience of one city being almost leveled twice, by air raid and earthquake, within only three years is one of few examples even among the cities of modern Japan. The quarter, and the buildings, were drawn anew twice over.

Even so, Fukui won back people to more than twice its population at the time and recovered. From this experience of being burned to ash twice and rebuilding each time, Fukui set the phoenix as the town’s symbol. The skeleton drawn as a castle town was razed twice, and upon it the present urban area is laid — if Kanazawa is “a castle town that remained without being burned,” then Fukui is “a castle town burned and rebuilt twice over.” And in 2024 the Hokuriku Shinkansen extended to Tsuruga, and the distance to the metropolitan region drew in.

What characterizes Fukui-shi is that, while the total population falls by three thousand six hundred and the absolute number of children also falls by a little over a thousand, the household-with-children share holds at 22.3%, on the high side for a prefectural capital. That the thickness of the child-rearing layer within households remains even as the head-count of children thins is a shape often seen in regional cities where three-generation households and dual-income working are rooted.

The Childcare Waitlist is 0. Here a re-reading is needed. A zero waitlist in a town where the absolute number of children is falling can be read less as the outcome of children thinning heavily than as the result of childcare supply catching up with the thickness of child-rearing households. Even with the same “zero waitlist,” the meaning differs between a town with a thin child-rearing layer and one with a thick one. The total population falls, the head-count of children falls, aging advances. And yet the child-rearing layer within households remains above two in ten, and the supply of childcare has caught up with that thickness. The numbers of Fukui, a prefectural capital, stand at the end of several such movements running at once. Gaze only at the total, and this firm response of the child-rearing layer does not come into view.

Fukui-shi takes a placement rare in the country: it sets the prefectural office and the city hall at the ruins of Fukui Castle. The castle ruins are still used as the core of administration. The urban area, including those ruins, spreads at the center of the Fukui Plain, where the Kuzuryu, Asuwa and Hino rivers flow, and has been the knot of administration and economy across the whole of Echizen.

It opened as the castle town of Kita-no-sho, was almost razed twice by air raid and earthquake, and each time people set the town anew at the same center of the plain. It won back people to more than twice its population at the time, and the town raised the phoenix as its own mark. Both the administrative function at the castle ruins and the role of a knot of the plain arise, in origin, from the siting at the center of the Fukui Plain. The continuity of returning to the same place even after being twice reduced to ash carried the quarter of the castle town through to the present. Burned twice and yet choosing again the center of the Fukui Plain — that very tenacity shaped the ground on which the present urban area stands.