Iida-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about ninety-eight thousand (98,164 in 2020). This city’s population has a step from an annexation merger. In 2005 Iida-shi annexed Kamimura and Minamishinano village to reach its present city area. What was 107,381 for the former Iida-shi in 2000, before annexation, became 108,624 in 2005 with the two villages added, and from there, through 105,335 in 2010 and 101,581 in 2015 to 98,164 in 2020, it fell gently after the annexation and dropped below one hundred thousand.

Looking inside the figures, the figure of a central city of the Ina Valley appears. The share aged 65 and over rose from 23.1% in 2000 to 32.6% in 2020, passing three in ten. The household-with-children share was 21.7% in 2020, and the Childcare Waitlist was zero in both 2024 and 2025. The Fiscal Capacity Index was 0.53 in fiscal 2023 — a level whose own tax revenue covers a little over half of expenditure, in the middle range for a regional city. The figure of the town of the highway post station, after the annexation, losing population and deepening in age while keeping the childcare waitlist at zero, appears in the numbers. Why it takes this shape cannot be read without going back over the history of the highway and the great fire.

Iida’s skeleton is set down by the highway joining Shinshu and Mikawa, and by the siting at the south of the Ina Valley. The old layer is the highway post station. This land flourished from of old as a post-station town on the highway joining Mikawa and Shinshu. The people and goods passing along the highway raised handicraft industries on this land. Along with raw silk, washi paper, lacquerware and umbrellas, the making of mizuhiki — paper twisted into a cord — took root, and its technique is held to have been handed down since the Genroku era. Iida is still known today as a producing region that makes a large share of the country’s mizuhiki products. An old tradition of dedicating ningyo joruri — a narrative art in which puppets are worked to tell a story — is also handed down on this land. The highway post station raised handicrafts and the performing arts.

And soon after the war, this town was beset by a great trial. In April 1947 (Showa 22) a fire that struck the urban area burned up about three-quarters of the town. It is held to be one of the largest urban fires in postwar Japan. But in its recovery from the burnt ground, the town set out a road to serve as a belt to prevent the spreading of fire. And from 1953, local junior-high-school students began to plant apple trees in that green belt. This row of apple trees became a symbol of the recovery from the great fire, and it still colors the center of the town. The handicrafts the highway raised, and the recovery from the great fire — this town’s shape stands upon the history of the highway and the crossing of the fire, which the geography of the south of the Ina Valley took in.

What characterizes Iida-shi is that, while holding the history of the handicrafts the highway post station raised, it has lost population and deepened in age after the annexation. From 108,624 in 2005, with the two villages added, to 98,164 in 2020, it lost more than ten thousand over fifteen years and dropped below one hundred thousand. In a land at the south of the Ina Valley, ringed by mountains and distant from large cities, the population can be read as having fallen gently within the flow of the young generation moving to the metropolitan and Chukyo regions and the like. That the share aged 65 and over was 32.6% in 2020, passing three in ten, is one expression of that population composition.

On the other hand, the Childcare Waitlist has moved at zero. It can be read as an expression of the urban functions of a central city of the Ina Valley having tied a certain layer of young households to the town. A Fiscal Capacity Index of 0.53 is a level whose own tax revenue covers a little over half of expenditure, in the middle range for a regional city. The local handicrafts such as mizuhiki, and the establishments of manufacturing, can be read as giving a certain thickness to the tax source. After the annexation it lost more than ten thousand over fifteen years, and aging passed three in ten. Even so, the waitlist holds at zero, and the fiscal strength stays in the middle range. The mizuhiki-making that the post station of the highway joining Mikawa and Shinshu raised still makes a large share of the country’s products, and that handicraft upholds the tax source of a town of the Ina Valley from below. The population falls, the town grows old, and yet the hands of mizuhiki, continuing since the Genroku era, still go on moving.

Iida is a land where, as a post station on the highway joining Shinshu and Mikawa, the people and goods passing to and fro raised handicrafts. Along with raw silk, washi paper, lacquerware and umbrellas, the making of mizuhiki — paper twisted into a cord — took root from around the Genroku era, and Iida still makes a large share of the country’s mizuhiki products today. An old tradition of dedicating a narrative art in which puppets are worked to tell a story is also handed down on this land. And in 1947, when it was beset by a great fire that burned three-quarters of the urban area, the town set out a road to serve as a belt to prevent the spreading of fire, and from 1953 local junior-high-school students began to plant apple trees there. That tree row still colors the center of the town.

From a post station on the highway joining Mikawa and Shinshu, to a town that raised mizuhiki and the performing arts, and to a town that crossed a great fire and raised an apple tree row — the geography of the highway joining two provinces at the south of the Ina Valley drew in the post station and the handicrafts. Not a castle town and not a port town, but the very coming and going of the highway carried industry and culture to this town. Each single apple tree the junior-high-school students planted on the burnt ground flowers each spring, quietly handing on, in the very middle of this town, the will of the people who rebuilt the town across the fire.