Nagano-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about three hundred and seventy-three thousand (372,760 in 2020). Over the five years from 377,598 in 2015 it fell by about five thousand. Although it is a prefectural capital, the population has already entered the stage of decline.

What I want to note here is that the number of children is thinning faster than the total. Those under 15 fell by more than six thousand in just five years, from 49,052 in 2015 to 42,777 in 2020. In the same period the share aged 65 and over rose from 28.1% to 29.0%, drawing near three in ten. Even where the total population declines gently, the aging within is advancing surely. The land price of residential areas is around 59,000 yen per m² — a low level even compared with other cities in the three-hundred-thousand range. The Fiscal Capacity Index is 0.71 — it does not reach 1.0: a prefectural capital within the structure where standard expenditure cannot be covered by its own tax revenue alone and the shortfall is filled by the local allocation tax. The household-with-children share is 19.9% (2020). The Childcare Waitlist has moved at a very low level, from 2 (2024) to 1 (2025). Why it takes this shape cannot be read without going back over the origin of the temple-gate town of Zenkoji and the history of being made to carry the prefectural capital.

Nagano’s skeleton begins not from a castle but from the gate-front of a single temple. Where many Japanese cities arose as castle towns centered on the warrior class, Nagano opened as the temple-gate town of the ancient temple of Zenkoji, as a place where pilgrims gathered. In the early-modern era this Zenkoji town also served as a post station on the Hokkoku Kaido, becoming a town of commerce where faith and the highway overlapped. What historical geography calls “the rise of a city with a place of faith at its core” was this town’s first foundation.

Yet the center of Shinano’s politics in the Edo era was not Nagano but the Matsushiro Domain. The composition reverses only after the Meiji era begins. When Nagano Prefecture was set up at the abolition of the domains in 1871, the prefectural office was placed not in Matsushiro, which had been the center of politics, but in Nagano, which had been the temple-gate town of Zenkoji. A town of commerce that had flourished by the drawing-in of faith was newly made to carry the role of being the administrative center of the prefecture. It became the prefectural capital with origin and role out of joint — this becomes the town’s second foundation.

The third is the industry and transport of the modern era. From the Meiji era on, the whole Shinshu region flourished by silk reeling, and Nagano became its collection-and-distribution point. In time the Shin’etsu Main Line and the Shinonoi Line ran through, and Nagano took the shape of a modern city as a railway junction. And in 1998, Nagano held a Winter Olympics. To meet that games the Shinkansen and the expressway were laid, and the town’s infrastructure was renewed a further step. From the temple-gate town of Zenkoji to the prefectural capital, from a silk-reeling distribution point to an Olympic host city — this town has piled, era by era, the roles of administration, industry and an international games upon an origin in faith.

What characterizes Nagano-shi is that, while the total population falls by five thousand, the number of children falls by more than six thousand. The decline of the children outpaces the decline of the total. This is a shape observed again and again in regional cities where the absolute number of people thins, and it is the obverse of the share of the elderly drawing near three in ten. Even a city that arose from the same kind of temple gate moves its living infrastructure in the opposite direction from a town that keeps growing.

The Childcare Waitlist is at a very low level, from 2 down to 1. Here a re-reading is needed. Unlike the lowness of Urayasu or Chofu, reached by balancing supply and demand amid rising numbers of children, Nagano’s lowness reads more coherently as the result of demand falling while the absolute number of children itself thins. The same “almost no childcare waitlist” means something entirely different depending on whether the number of children behind it is rising or falling. The children fall faster, the share of the elderly draws near three in ten, and yet the administrative scale of a prefectural capital is kept — and within that, the childcare waitlist too converges to a small value. In this town, where an origin as the temple-gate town of Zenkoji was made to carry the prefectural capital, even a figure like a low childcare waitlist flips its meaning depending on whether the number of children behind it is rising or falling. And so the numbers can only be read together with what lies behind them.

Nagano holds Zenkoji, the very origin of the town. At the Gokaicho, held once in seven years by the traditional count, several million worshippers gather from across the country (about 6.36 million at the most recent, in 2022), and the drawing-in of faith has gone on forming the center of this town on a scale of a thousand years. Upon that, the administrative function as the prefectural capital carried at the abolition of the domains was laid, and the political and economic center of the prefecture gathered into this single city. Furthermore, the face of an Olympic host city of 1998 was added, and the Shinkansen and the expressway laid to meet that games still uphold the axis of transport toward the metropolitan region.

It opened as the temple-gate town of Zenkoji, carried the prefectural capital, and held the Olympics — an origin as a place that gathers people through faith has, era by era, swapped on different roles. The worshippers of the Gokaicho, the administration of the prefectural office, and the infrastructure of the Olympics all branched, in origin, from the same beginning of the temple-gate town of Zenkoji. A town that began not from a castle but from the gate-front of a single temple has come to bind together, within one city area, a thousand years of pilgrimage, the administration of the prefecture, and the legacy of an international games.