Ichinomiya-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 380,000 (380,073 in 2020). Over the five years from 380,868 in 2015, it fell by about eight hundred, moving almost flat. Unlike neighboring Okazaki, which keeps a rising trend, Ichinomiya is a core city at a stage where its population has entered a plateau.

What we should note here is that the aging is steadily advancing. The share aged 65 and over rose from 25.5% (2015) to 27.0% (2020), and those under 15 fell by over four thousand, from 52,948 to 48,805. The household-with-children share is 23.1% (2020); while the absolute number of children falls, it keeps a certain thickness. The Official Land Price for residential land is around 84,000 yen per m² (84,250 yen, 2026), a level lower than Okazaki, a core city of the same Mikawa-Owari region. The Fiscal Capacity Index is 0.77 (2023); the portion that does not reach 1.0 is in a structure supplemented by the local allocation tax for standard expenditure. The Childcare Waitlist is zero (2025). Why these numbers take this shape cannot be read without going back over the history of the temple-gate town and the textile industry.

Ichinomiya’s skeleton is the history in which a single shrine and a single industry decided the town’s name and character. In ancient times there was in this land Masumida Shrine, the ichinomiya of Owari Province — the foremost shrine that a provincial governor worshipped first when touring his post. The town that opened before its gate came in time to be called "Ichinomiya," and that became the city’s name directly. The rise of a settlement with a place of worship at its core — this, in historical geography, is the town’s first foundation.

The second foundation, and the one that made this town’s name known across the country, is textiles. There is a record that silk cloth was already woven here in the Heian era, and in the Edo era the trade in cotton cloth flourished at the sanpachi market held on the days bearing three and eight. From the Meiji era on, the production of cloth was industrialized, and this area developed rapidly as a producing district of woolens (Bishu) for Western clothing. By the early Showa era it had become known across the country as "Ichinomiya, the kingdom of woolen cloth." This, in economic geography, is a producing-district agglomeration specialized in a single industry. In the postwar high-growth era, the masters of the weaving houses used coffee shops for business talks, and the custom of adding boiled eggs and peanuts there spread through the town — this is the origin of the "Morning" culture that remains even now.

The third foundation is the merger. In 2005, Ichinomiya incorporated Bisai City and Kisogawa Town, and the population widened to about 370,000. And in 2021 it became a core city. Opening as a temple-gate town, weaving itself up from silk to cotton and from cotton into a great producing district of woolens, and through the rise and fall of the district becoming a core city joining its neighbors — this town’s shape is piled upon the two cores of the shrine’s gate and the textile industry.

What characterizes Ichinomiya is that, with the population on an almost-flat plateau and the aging advancing, the childcare waitlist has become zero. Those under 15 fell by over four thousand, from 52,948 to 48,805, and the share aged 65 and over reached twenty-seven percent. The absolute number of children thins and the share of the elderly nears three in ten — this population dynamic bears directly on the supply and demand of childcare.

The Childcare Waitlist is zero. But this zero is better read as a result where supply caught up with demand because the absolute number of children fell, while a certain demand remained at a household-with-children share of 23.1%. It points the opposite way, in its underlying meaning, from neighboring Okazaki, which cannot push its waitlist all the way to zero because of the thickness of child-rearing households. Even in core cities of the same Owari-Mikawa region, the "16 on the waitlist" of growing Okazaki and the "0 on the waitlist" of plateaued Ichinomiya are numbers standing upon entirely different backgrounds — whether children are increasing or thinning. One cannot, by looking at the single word "zero waitlist," bundle the two towns under the same "ease of raising children." The numbers mirror not good or bad, but the structure of the town.

Ichinomiya holds several functions of its own. One is Masumida Shrine, which as the ichinomiya of Owari Province became the origin of the town’s name — a core of faith conveying the origin of a temple-gate town to this day. Another is the agglomeration of the textile industry, continuing from the silk of the Heian era and known across the country from the Meiji era on as a great producing district of woolens (Bishu); the custom of "Morning," born from the weaving houses and their business-talk culture, is also a vestige of that industry. Further, on the bank of the Kiso River flowing to the city’s west, there is 138 Tower Park, centered on the 138-meter Twin Arch 138.

In 2005 Ichinomiya incorporated Bisai City and Kisogawa Town, and in 2021 it became a core city. From the gate of the shrine, to a town of silk and cotton cloth, to a great producing district of woolens, and to a core city joining its neighbors — the origin of "the gate of the foremost shrine of Owari" and the condition of "a textile-producing district along the Kiso River" have swapped a different function onto themselves in each age. The gate of the foremost shrine of Owari, and the textile-producing district along the Kiso River. The shrine, the weaving houses and the "Morning" of the morning coffee all branch off from these two cores.