Suwa-shi

In the most recent Population Census the population is about 49,000 (48,729 in 2020). This city’s population eased down not in a step caused by a large merger, but gently — from 53,858 in 2000 to 53,240 in 2005, 51,200 in 2010, 50,140 in 2015 and 48,729 in 2020, some five thousand fewer over twenty years. It is the curve of a lakeside town shrinking on a gentle slope.

Look into the makeup and the character of a manufacturing town remains. The share aged 65 and over was 30.9% in 2020 — just over three in ten, not too deep for a regional city. Households with children are 20.6%, and the childcare waitlist has been zero in recent years. The Fiscal Capacity Index was 0.68 in FY2023, a level at which roughly seven-tenths of expenditure is covered by its own tax revenue — on the higher side for a regional city. The numbers show a lakeside town of silk and precision keeping a gentle population decline together with fiscal stamina above the middle. Why it takes this shape cannot be read without going back to the turn from silk-reeling to precision.

Suwa’s skeleton is set by its geography as a basin facing the broad water surface of Lake Suwa. Here stands the Upper Shrine of Suwa Taisha, one of the head shrines of all the Suwa shrines across the country, and on the lakeshore stands Takashima Castle, built about 420 years ago. The lake water once pressed up to the castle’s edge, earning it the name “the floating castle of Suwa” — a name that tells of a town’s origin merged with the lake.

That lakeside town turned into an industrial town in the modern era. In the Meiji era silk-reeling grew rapidly in Suwa. Mills that adopted and improved upon the techniques of Tomioka lined the lakeshore, and Suwa became a major center of silk-reeling. It is a textbook case, in economic geography, of a single industry concentrating in a region.

Then, during the Second World War, a second industry overlay this silk town. Factories making precision machinery — watches, cameras and music boxes — evacuated to Suwa to escape the fires of war. The equipment and motive power the silk mills held, and the dexterous labor, were diverted directly to making precision machinery. The thread-reeling town was thus reloaded into a precision town, and because its climate and conditions resembled Switzerland and suited precision industry, it was called “the Switzerland of the East.” The source of the companies that would later lead to Seiko Epson also lies in an industrial firm founded in Suwa in 1942. Beginning on the lakeshore of Suwa Taisha and Takashima Castle, becoming a silk town, then moving to a precision-machinery town — this town’s shape stands on a history of reloading its industry.

What characterizes Suwa is that, while the population eases down, it keeps the stamina of a manufacturing town. The decline held to some five thousand over twenty years, the aging rate is 30.9%, and households with children are 20.6%. This can be read as a sign that the precision-machinery industry concentrated on the Suwa lakeshore still supports the town as a place for making watches, precision parts and electronics, holding on to some measure of young households and industry.

The thickness of that industry shows in the fiscal figures too. A Fiscal Capacity Index of 0.68 is a level at which roughly seven-tenths of expenditure is covered by its own tax revenue — on the higher side for a regional city. It can be read that the industry reloaded from silk to precision still gives depth to the tax base. The childcare waitlist has also held at zero in recent years. The town of Suwa Taisha and Lake Suwa now carries both a gentle population decline and fiscal stamina backed by manufacturing. The thread-reeling town turned into a town of watches and cameras; the population thins gently while fiscal stamina alone stays above the average for a regional city — Suwa’s numbers mirror where this lakeside town that reloaded its industry now stands.

Suwa holds more than one function. It has the origin of lakeside faith and a castle town in the Upper Shrine of Suwa Taisha and Takashima Castle; the memory of becoming a major center of silk-reeling in the Meiji era; and the face of a manufacturing town that, through wartime evacuation, reloaded its industry onto precision machinery and came to be called “the Switzerland of the East.” Upon the origin of a floating castle whose water once pressed to the castle’s edge, the prosperity of silk and the industry of precision were laid one over another.

Suwa is a town that reloaded its industry on the lakeshore. From the lakeside of Suwa Taisha and Takashima Castle, to a major center of silk-reeling, to a precision-machinery town — the condition that it “faces Lake Suwa and could divert the equipment and motive power of silk into precision” drew manufacturing to this lakeshore. The water and power that turned the silk-reeling machines were handed on directly to the watch and camera factories that fled the fires of war. The present of Suwa gathers in that single fact: the legacy of silk turning into precision.