Toyohashi-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 372,000 (371,920 in 2020). Over the five years from 374,765 in 2015, it fell by about three thousand. At the level of the 370,000s, the decline is at a very gentle stage.

What we should note here is that the number of children is falling faster than the total population. Those under 15 fell by over four thousand in five years, from 52,524 (2015) to 48,558 (2020). In the same period the share aged 65 and over rose from 24.0% to 25.7%. The way the aging advances is on the gentle side compared with other cities of similar scale, but the fall of children exceeds the fall of the total population. The Official Land Price for residential land is around 91,000 yen per m². The Fiscal Capacity Index is 0.98, just below 1.0 — a level that can cover most standard expenditure with its own tax revenue, suggesting the thickness fitting a city that holds industry. The household-with-children share, at 22.6% (2020), is rather high among cities of similar scale. The Childcare Waitlist is zero (2025). Why these numbers take this shape cannot be read without going back over the history of the castle town and the post town, and the Port of Mikawa.

Toyohashi’s skeleton is the history of how the location of a key point of eastern Mikawa drew in a different role in each age. This city is on the plain where the Toyokawa and the Asakura rivers join, and it was long a key point of traffic in eastern Mikawa. In the Warring States period Yoshida Castle was built at this key point, and a samurai quarter and a castle town took shape. It is the typical case, in economic geography, of urban functions gathering at a node of traffic.

The second foundation is the highway. In the Edo era, the castle town doubled as a station of the fifty-three stages of the Tokaido (Yoshida-juku). Yoshida-juku was the thirty-fourth post station counted from Nihonbashi in Edo, with Futagawa-juku placed to its east, and travelers and goods passed through this plain. The two functions of castle town and post town overlapped, and people and commerce gathered in the town.

The third foundation is the harbor and industry added from the modern age on. In 1962 the ports of Toyohashi, Tahara, Nishiura and Gamagori were merged to form the Port of Mikawa, and in 1964 it was raised to a major port. In time this port grew into a hub of automobile trade, and since 1993 its handling of imported cars has been the largest in Japan — roughly half of the imported cars entering the country are landed at this port. Around the port spreads a coastal industrial zone centered on automobile-related industry, and it also carries the export of finished cars. The plain that let travelers through as a post town on the highway has now become a port that lets through cars coming from across the sea. The location of a key point stays unchanged; only what passes through has changed, from travelers to cars — this is this city’s history.

What characterizes Toyohashi is that, even as the total population falls by three thousand and children fall by over four thousand, the household-with-children share is kept rather thick at 22.6% among cities of similar scale. In a city that holds industry and has workplaces, households in the child-rearing stage tend to stay. This appears as a gentle decline coexisting with a certain share of young households — different both from a provincial city thinning rapidly and from a city like Urayasu where the children themselves increase.

The Childcare Waitlist is zero. The re-reading here is this. The absolute number of children fell by over four thousand in five years, in a phase heading toward a ceiling in demand. The zero waitlist is better read as an equilibrium where supply caught up while the growth of demand slowed, rather than a result of supply being made to keep pace while children went on increasing. That said, the thickness of a fiscal capacity of 0.98, covering nearly all expenditure with its own tax revenue, likely also underpins the childcare supply. Children gently decline, the aging gently advances, yet the child-rearing households are thick and there is no waitlist — in an industrial city where these several currents proceed at once, the numbers of living infrastructure settle in a stable place. This number, too, will be misread in its meaning unless read together with its background.

Toyohashi holds several functions of its own. One is the Port of Mikawa, a hub of automobile trade, which holds the face of the largest handling of imported cars in Japan, with a coastal industrial zone spreading behind it. Another is the Toyohashi Railroad city line running through the town — the so-called streetcar. Opened in 1925, this line is known as the only streetcar in the country that runs over National Route 1 (which overlaps the old Tokaido), joining Tokyo and Osaka. That in Toyohashi, once a post town on the highway, a streetcar still runs along the route of the old highway, is an example of history left directly on the map.

As the central city of eastern Mikawa, Toyohashi has held the functions of castle town, post town, harbor and industry all in one. From the castle town of Yoshida Castle to a Tokaido post town, and further to a port of automobile trade — the location of "a key point of eastern Mikawa" has swapped a different role onto itself in each age. The castle, the post town and the port were all, in origin, set upon the same location, the plain where the Toyokawa joins. The castle town of Yoshida Castle, the Tokaido post town, and the port that ships out cars all stood on the same plain where the Toyokawa joins. Even as what passes through has changed from travelers to cars, that this place has remained eastern Mikawa’s place of passage has not changed.