Kuwana-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 139,000 (138,613 in 2020). What I want to note first here is that the surge of some thirty thousand, from 108,378 in 2000 to 138,963 in 2005, is not the result of people increasing naturally. It owes to the incorporation of two neighboring towns in 2004, and the step in the figures mirrors that merger.

On top of that, looking inside the post-merger figures, from 138,963 in 2005 to 138,613 in 2020, it holds almost level. This is rare amid the many regional cities whose populations keep declining, and one can read that the siting at the rim of the Nagoya sphere has held back the outflow of population. On the other hand, the number of children is declining. Those under 15 fell by about three thousand six hundred in the fifteen post-merger years, from 21,417 in 2005 to 17,826 in 2020. The share aged 65 and over rose from 15.5% in 2000 to 26.8% in 2020. The household-with-children share is 22.7% (2020), the Childcare Waitlist has been zero in recent years, and the Fiscal Capacity Index was 0.80 in fiscal 2023. The figure of a town that holds its population while the generations turn over inside appears in the numbers. Why it takes this shape cannot be read without going back over the history of the highway and the ferry.

Kuwana’s skeleton is set as the junction where the land highway and the sea ferry met. The Tokaido linking Edo and Kyoto was laid out by Tokugawa Ieyasu, who won the Battle of Sekigahara, from the following year; Kuwana is the forty-second of its fifty-three stations. By the time the system of alternate attendance was in place, Kuwana-juku was one of the foremost post towns of the Tokaido, with the second-most inns and the most secondary honjin.

What made this station special is that here the highway goes out to sea once. The stretch between the neighboring Miya (present-day Atsuta, Nagoya) and Kuwana was the only sea route on the Tokaido, and because its distance was seven ri (about 27 kilometers) it was called "the Seven-Ri Ferry." Travelers who had come on foot changed here to a boat and crossed the sea, taking about four hours. That it was the place of that transfer — where the land road connects by sea — gathered people and goods at Kuwana.

And this harbor post town was at the same time a castle town. In 1601 (Keicho 6), Honda Tadakatsu, counted as one of the Four Heavenly Kings of the Tokugawa, became the first lord of the Kuwana domain and laid out Kuwana Castle and its town. In the time of a later lord, Matsudaira Sadatsuna, effort is said to have been poured, along with the opening of new paddy fields, into industries such as ironware, into the education of retainers, and into the protection of farmers. Post town, ferry, castle town, ironware — Kuwana’s character stands upon the history of this junction of land and sea.

What characterizes Kuwana is that, while the total population holds almost level, the generations turn over inside it. That the total population has hardly fallen in the fifteen post-merger years can be read as the expression of the siting at the rim of the Nagoya sphere having roughly balanced the inflow and outflow of young households. But behind that, those under 15 fell by about three thousand six hundred, and the aging rate rose by eleven points in twenty years. Though the town’s headcount as a whole is held, its inside is surely growing older.

The numbers of living infrastructure mirror this stability. The primary schools rose from around nineteen to twenty-nine with the merger of 2004, as the incorporated towns’ school networks were bundled as they were. Thereafter they hold at twenty-nine, and even amid gently declining children the school network dispersed across the widened city area is maintained. The Childcare Waitlist has stayed at zero in recent years. The town that flourished as a post town of the Tokaido and a harbor of the Seven-Ri Ferry, laid out as a castle town, now holds its population at the rim of the Nagoya sphere while quietly turning over its generations inside. The level total covers, from the face, the turnover of fewer children and more elderly.

Kuwana holds several functions of its own. One is its character as the ferry landing of the "Seven-Ri Ferry," the only sea route on the Tokaido, which gathered people and goods as the place of transfer where the land highway connects by sea. Another is the history of being the castle town of the Kuwana domain beginning with Honda Tadakatsu, which became the ground for industries such as ironware to take root in this land. And the landform of the river mouth of the three rivers has supported Kuwana as a harbor town.

Kuwana is a town that grew up at the place where the land road and the sea road change over. From a post town of the Tokaido, to the harbor of the Seven-Ri Ferry, to the castle town of Honda Tadakatsu, and to a residential land at the rim of the Nagoya sphere — the geography "the highway, having come by land, here goes out to sea" called the post town, the harbor and the castle, and set the town’s skeleton. At the river mouth where the three Kiso rivers pour into Ise Bay, a post town of the Tokaido and the harbor of the Seven-Ri Ferry crossing the sea opened. This river mouth, where the land highway and the sea ferry crossed, was laid out as a castle town and formed a town at the rim of the Nagoya sphere.