Gifu-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 403,000 (402,557 in 2020). Over the five years from 406,735 in 2015, it fell by some four thousand. It is a prefectural capital of the Chubu region that has already entered a phase of decline.

The fall in the number of children is faster than the fall in the total. Those under 15 fell by some five thousand, from 50,957 (2015) to 45,760 (2020). In the same period the share aged 65 and over rose from 27.2% to 28.1%, already past one in four, and is shifting its center of gravity still further toward the elderly side. The household-with-children share is 19.3% (2020). The Official Land Price for residential land is around 68,000 yen per m², a level held down even compared with other prefectural capitals of the same scale. The Fiscal Capacity Index is 0.82 (2023), a structure in which its own tax revenue alone cannot cover standard expenditure and the difference is supplemented by the local allocation tax — the same standing as many provincial cities. The Childcare Waitlist is zero (2025). But a zero waitlist is also the reverse side of the number of children having fallen by five thousand in five years. Why it takes this shape cannot be read without going back over the history of the castle town, the water transport and textiles.

Gifu’s skeleton is a history in which commerce has accumulated, changing its form again and again, upon two geographical conditions: the mountain castle of Mount Kinka and the water transport of the Nagara River. In the warring-states period, Saito Dosan built a castle on Mount Kinka and laid out the town of Inokuchi at its foot. The one who greatly remade this was Oda Nobunaga. In 1567 Nobunaga took Inabayama Castle, renamed "Inokuchi" as "Gifu," and set it as the base for unifying the realm.

What Nobunaga laid down in this castle town was the free-market, free-guild policy. By removing the privileges of the guilds and the taxes on the market, it was a deregulation that let anyone trade freely, drawing people and commerce back to a castle town worn down by war. With the water transport of the Nagara River, which Dosan had built, as its axis, the castle town grew into one of the leading commercial cities of the country. Luis Frois, the missionary who visited this place at the time, left a record of the bustle of the castle town. In terms of economic geography, it is a classic case where, at the point where a political core (the castle) and a logistics axis (the river) overlapped, a system (the free-market, free-guild policy) gathered people.

This character of a "city of commerce" appears, in changed form, after the war as well. In the burnt-out plain before Gifu Station after the Second World War, repatriates from the continent lined up barracks selling used clothing and military uniforms, and the area was once called "Harbin Street." This grew into a textile-wholesalers’ district. By 1965 the total sales of clothing exceeded 100 billion yen, and at the peak around 1980 more than 1,600 clothing wholesalers gathered, and Gifu was counted as one of the fashion production centers ranking with Tokyo and Osaka. Gifu, apt to be seen as a "city for living" within the Nagoya sphere, was originally a center of commerce raised by the water transport of the Nagara River — that origin connects in a single thread from the free market of the castle town to the wholesalers’ district after the war.

What characterizes Gifu City is that, while the total population falls by four thousand, the number of children falls by five thousand. That is, the fall in children is faster than the fall in the total. This shows the order in which it will come to bear on the numbers of living infrastructure from here on. The share of the elderly has already passed one in four, and on top of that the young layer thins first — the form, in population dynamics, where shrinkage proceeds from the bottom of the generations.

The reverse side of this appears as the number of zero waitlist (2025). Here a re-reading is needed. To make the waitlist zero in a major metropolitan sphere is the result of supply overtaking demand, but Gifu’s is inseparable from the number of children having fallen by five thousand in five years. Even the same "zero waitlist" means something entirely different behind it in a city where children increase and in a city where children thin. The household-with-children share of 19.3%, too, is misread if one forgets it is a share amid a falling total of children. This number, too, will be taken wrongly if not read together with its background.

Gifu City holds several functions of its own. One is Gifu Castle, standing on the summit of Mount Kinka, and the castle town at its foot; Nobunaga’s free-market, free-guild policy and "the hospitality of Lord Nobunaga" were certified as the very first Japan Heritage in 2015 — the origin as a castle town still remains as a core of tourism. Another is the Nagara River, whose axis of water transport that raised the castle town carries on to this day the form of cormorant fishing, a way of fishing continuing for more than a thousand years.

Further, Gifu, as the prefectural capital of Mino, bears the functions of administration and education. The post-war textile-wholesalers’ district has shrunk from its former scale, but the memory of that accumulation remains as the character of a city of the fashion industry. From the free market of the castle town, to the commerce of the river port, to the post-war wholesalers’ district — the origin of "a place of commerce between the Nagara River and Mount Kinka" has, in each era, carried a different industry. The natural landform first decided the axes of logistics and defense, and onto them systems and industries came one after another. It is a city where mountain and river set the bone, and over them commerce has changed clothes again and again.