Matsumoto-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about two hundred and forty-one thousand (241,145 in 2020). Over the five years from 243,293 in 2015 it fell by more than two thousand. In Nagano Prefecture it is second in scale only to the prefectural capital, Nagano-shi, and what I want to note here is that the population has entered a stage of crossing the crest gently.

The number of children is thinning faster than that. Those under 15 fell by more than two thousand in five years, from 32,294 in 2015 to 30,107 in 2020. In the same period the share aged 65 and over rose from 26.3% to 27.6%. The household-with-children share is 20.7% (2020). The land price of residential areas is around 19,000 yen per m² (18,500 yen) — a low level even compared with the coastal areas of Numazu and Fuji to be seen later. The Fiscal Capacity Index is 0.70 — it does not reach 1.0: a Core City of the Chushin region 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 Childcare Waitlist fell from 15 (2024) to 7 (2025). Why these numbers take this shape cannot be read without going back over the history of the castle town and the city of learning.

Matsumoto’s skeleton is drawn around a castle set down five hundred years ago. In the warring-states Eisho years (1504–1520), the Ogasawara family, the military governors of Shinano, built Fukashi Castle, which is held to be the origin, and in 1582 Ogasawara Sadayoshi renamed it Matsumoto Castle. What historical geography calls “the rise of a castle town with a castle at its core” is this town’s first foundation.

What decided the castle’s form was Ishikawa Kazumasa and his son Yasunaga, who entered after the Odawara Campaign of 1590. They laid out the five-storied, six-tiered keep and the castle town, and this keep is held to be the oldest among five-storied, six-tiered keeps still standing. Through the Edo era Matsumoto served as the office of the Matsumoto Domain, and through the castle town ran the Zenkoji Kaido along the outer moat, from which the Chikuni Kaido and the Nomugi Kaido branched off. The geographical condition of being a hub of transport where highways threading among the mountains of Shinshu branched gathered people and goods into the castle town. Five buildings, the keep among them, were later designated National Treasures, in 1936 and 1952, and the castle ruins are a National Historic Site.

The third foundation is learning. In 1919 the national former-system Matsumoto Higher School was placed in Matsumoto. And after the war, in 1949, eight schools including Matsumoto Medical College and Matsumoto Higher School were merged to found the new-system Shinshu University, whose headquarters was placed in Matsumoto. The administrative and educational functions piled upon the castle town made Matsumoto a town of students, called a “city of learning.” It opened as a castle town, became a junction of highways, and holds a university — not faith and not industry, but the conditions of castle, highway and learning have piled, crossing eras, upon a basin of Shinshu.

What characterizes Matsumoto-shi is that, while the total population falls by about two thousand, the number of children falls by about the same scale. Almost in step with the total crossing the crest, the young generation too thins. It is not the sharp plunge of a place like Numazu in eastern Shizuoka Prefecture, nor the severe school consolidation common to population-falling regional cities, but appears as the gentle downward phase of a Core City of Shinshu.

The Childcare Waitlist fell roughly by half, from 15 to 7. What is to be watched here is whether this decline may be read only as “supply and demand balancing further.” In a town where the absolute number of children has thinned by more than two thousand in five years, the decline of the childcare waitlist may mix, besides the portion by which supply was increased, the portion by which the number of children to be placed has itself fallen. The household-with-children share is 20.7%, and as a Core City it holds a certain layer of child-rearing households. The share of the elderly draws near three in ten, the children fall gently, and yet the decline of the total population is small on a per-year basis. Whether the childcare waitlist fell by half because supply increased or because the number of children to be placed fell — in the city of learning that has piled castle, highway and learning, the answer to that question, too, cannot be drawn without the population dynamics behind it.

Matsumoto keeps at the center of its urban area a National Treasure keep — five-storied and six-tiered, held to be the oldest still standing. With that keep at its core, a castle town spread along the Zenkoji Kaido by the outer moat, handing the skeleton drawn five hundred years ago down to the present. From the castle town the Chikuni Kaido and the Nomugi Kaido branched off, and as a junction joining the spaces among the mountains of Shinshu it has gathered people and goods since the age of the highways. And as a “city of learning” holding Shinshu University, with the former-system Matsumoto Higher School as its starting point, it carries the administrative and educational center functions of the Chushin region.

From castle town to hub of highways, and further to city of learning — the condition of being a central place of a castle town set in a basin of Shinshu has swapped on different functions era by era. The castle, the highways, and the university all arose, in origin, from the same siting of a basin of the Chushin region. Rather than following the natural terrain, it was the setting-down of a castle in the basin that drew in the highways and in time called in even learning. A single castle, placed five hundred years ago, has drawn to itself the whole subsequent gathering of highways and learning.