Fujieda-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about one hundred forty-one thousand (141,342 in 2020). This city’s population has a step from an incorporation merger. Fujieda City incorporated Okabe Town in 2009 to become the present city area. The former Fujieda City’s 128,494 in 2000 and 129,248 in 2005 became 142,151 in 2010 with Okabe Town added, and from there, from a peak of 143,605 in 2015 to 141,342 in 2020, it shows a near-flat movement.

Looking inside the figures, the form of a residential city along the Tokaido appears. The share aged 65 and over rose from 16.7% in 2000 to 30.1% in 2020 — nearly doubling in twenty years and passing three in ten. The household-with-children share is high at 23.7% in 2020, and the Childcare Waitlist was zero in both 2024 and 2025. The Fiscal Capacity Index was 0.82 in fiscal 2023 — a high level whose own tax revenue can cover over eight-tenths of expenditure. The figure of the town of the post town and the castle town, keeping its population nearly constant after incorporation while deepening its aging and keeping its fiscal stamina high, appears in the numbers. Why it takes this shape cannot be read without going back over the history of the Tokaido and Tanaka Castle.

Fujieda’s skeleton is set by the great highway called the Tokaido and by the location of the Shida plain. The old layer is the post town and the castle town. When, in 1601, a post town was set on the Tokaido reaching from Edo to Kyoto, Fujieda became its 22nd station. Together with this, in this land there was Tanaka Castle. Built on a slight rise along the Seto River, this castle had a concentric layout of about six hundred meters in diameter, ringed by a quadruple moat — a form rare even nationally. It is handed down that a local lord of this land first built it, and that in the warring-states age it was taken by a renowned general and renamed Tanaka Castle. In the Edo era it flourished as the castle town of a forty-thousand-koku domain whose successive castellans served in high posts of the shogunate. The post town and the castle town set this town’s old skeleton.

And in the modern age, a new footing layered upon this town. When the export of tea began at the end of the Edo era, tea merchants gathered in Fujieda, near the tea-producing region and convenient in traffic, and came to handle tea for export. In some districts of the city, the finest gyokuro is produced, and it is counted among the country’s leading producing regions. Further, this town came to be known too as a "city of football," taking its rise from the fact that a middle school opened in the Taisho era adopted football as its school sport in an age when baseball was at its height, turning out many famous players. Post town and castle town, tea, and football — this town’s shape stands upon a history of several footings layered upon the highway called the Tokaido.

What characterizes Fujieda is that, while holding the history of post town and castle town, it increased its population as a residential city along the Tokaido and then shows a near-flat movement. From 142,151 in 2010, when it incorporated Okabe Town, through a peak of 143,605 in 2015, to 141,342 in 2020, it has moved nearly flat. Amid the many provincial cities losing population, the traffic convenience of being along the Tokaido, and the convenience of commuting toward Shizuoka and the Tokyo direction, have tied people constant for a time, as it can be read. That the share aged 65 and over nearly doubled in twenty years and passed three in ten is an expression of the residing generations aging together.

On the other hand, the fiscal stamina is kept high. The Fiscal Capacity Index of 0.82 is a high level for a provincial city, whose own tax revenue can cover over eight-tenths of expenditure. The income of the residents as a residential city along the Tokaido, and the tax source of the local industries, have supported the city’s finances, as it can be read. The household-with-children share is high at 23.7%, and the Childcare Waitlist was zero in both 2024 and 2025. The town of the post town and the castle town now keeps its population nearly constant while deepening its aging, and keeps its fiscal stamina high. The population is nearly flat, the aging passes three in ten, and the fiscal stamina is high. The flat population and the high finance are not separate merits but come from one location — the convenience along the Tokaido having held the residents and the local industries in place.

Fujieda holds several functions of its own. One is the history of the 22nd station of the Tokaido and the castle town of the concentric Tanaka Castle ringed with a quadruple moat, holding the old layer of highway and castle town. Another is the character of a collecting and distributing center of tea called by a location near the tea-producing region and convenient in traffic, keeping the districts that produce the finest gyokuro. And the culture of a "city of football," beginning with a middle school of the Taisho era, gives this town the peculiar structure of having layered upon the coming and going of the highway.

Fujieda is a town where footings have layered upon the coming and going of the Tokaido. From the Tokaido post town and the castle town of Tanaka Castle, to the collecting and distributing center of tea, and to a residential city and a "city of football" — the geography of "the Tokaido piercing the Shida plain" called the post town and the castle town, drew in tea and commuting convenience, and set the town’s skeleton. That the Tokaido pierced the Shida plain first called the post town and the castle town of Tanaka Castle, and later called the collecting of tea and the commuting convenience. Upon the same coming and going, the footings of each age have piled up.