Hikone-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 114,000 (113,647 in 2020). From 113,679 in 2015 it has moved by no more than some thirty over five years — almost level. One may say it is a city in a quiet equilibrium, neither rising nor falling.

That said, even where the total does not move, the inside moves. Those under 15 fell by some one thousand, from 15,979 (2015) to 14,888 (2020). In the same five years the share aged 65 and over rose from 23.1% to 24.9%. The total stays still while children decline and the share of the elderly rises — a form in which the stability of the whole figure covers the change of the inner breakdown. The Official Land Price for residential land is around 43,000 yen per m². The Fiscal Capacity Index is 0.75, which does not reach 1.0 — a structure that cannot fully cover standard expenditure with its own tax revenue and is supplemented by the local allocation tax. The Childcare Waitlist fell from 1 (2024) to 0 (2025). The household-with-children share is 21.7% (2020). Why these numbers take this shape cannot be read without going back over the history of the castle, the highway and the handiwork.

Hikone’s skeleton is the very history in which a castle and a highway called craftsmen, and that handiwork branched into local industries. After the Battle of Sekigahara, the Ii family, carrying on the lineage of Ii Naomasa, one of the Four Heavenly Kings of the Tokugawa, entered this land as a base of eastern Omi. The first-phase works of Hikone Castle began in 1604 as a shogunate-led official construction (kogi-bushin), with laborers mobilized from the provinces. The second-phase works after the Summer Campaign of Osaka were advanced mainly by the Ii family, and the castle was completed in 1622. The Ii family held through the Edo period the rank of the foremost hereditary daimyo, with a domain of about three hundred thousand koku. A castle town was organized around the castle, and the Nakasendo passed near it, linking the highway’s post towns.

From here the handiwork branched. With the coming of a peaceful age, the lacquerers, cabinetmakers and metal-fitting artisans who had made arms and weapons in the castle town turned to the making of Buddhist altars as an industry of a peaceful era. This is the rise of "Hikone Buddhist altars," and a craftsmen’s quarter grew up around the so-called "Seven Bends" linking the castle town and the Nakasendo. Further, in the Meiji era, an artisan who handled the metal fittings of Buddhist implements was asked to make steam valves for silk-reeling factories, and applied the metal-fitting technique to the making of water faucets — this is the rise of Hikone’s valve industry. The three — Buddhist altars, valves and sewing — are called "the 3B," and have supported the town as local industries sourced in the castle town’s handiwork. It is, in historical geography, the typical path dependence in which a castle town’s skills shifted into industry. A castle and a highway called craftsmen, and their skills, changing form age by age, struck roots in the town.

What characterizes Hikone is that, while the total population stays almost level, the number of children alone falls by some one thousand. That appears in the numbers of living infrastructure not as the drastic consolidation common to declining regional cities, but as a gentle attrition. That the total does not move does not necessarily mean it is stable as a town of the child-rearing stage. Behind the stability of the total, a turnover of the inside proceeds — children decline and the share of the elderly nears a quarter.

The Childcare Waitlist fell from 1 to 0. In a town where the household-with-children share is 21.7% and the absolute number of children gently declines, demand for childcare too settles little by little, and supply more readily catches up. To read the waitlist becoming zero only as proof that the child-rearing environment has grown ample is too quick. The same figure contains the possibility that the number of children itself is thinning behind it. The level total, the decline of children, the zero waitlist — these three are not separate events, but a single movement, the turnover of the population, mirrored on three faces.

Hikone holds several functions of its own. One is Hikone Castle, whose keep escaped the Meiji castle-abolition order and survives, designated a National Treasure, where the castle-town streets centered on the castle still remain at the heart of the city. Another is the "3B" local industries of Buddhist altars, valves and sewing, sourced in that castle town’s handiwork, where the skills of the craftsmen the castle called have struck roots in the town as industry. And the highway course of the Nakasendo, which ran through the castle town, remains as a historic road that linked the post towns and the castle town.

Hikone is one of the few towns where the castle survives as it is and the handiwork the castle called became, as it is, an industry. From the craftsmen of arms to Buddhist altars, from the metal fittings of altars to valves — the condition "a castle and a highway called craftsmen" has changed form into a different industry age by age. Both the altars and the valves branched, in origin, from the same handiwork skills of the castle town. The skills of craftsmen who forged arms moved, when the age of arms departed, to the making of Buddhist altars, and the technique of polishing the metal fittings of those altars turned in time to the making of valves. One handiwork the castle called survives as an industry, changing its counterpart.