Kusatsu-shi

In the 2020 Population Census, Kusatsu’s population is 143,913. Compared with 115,455 in 2000, it works out to having piled on nearly thirty thousand over twenty years. Even within Shiga Prefecture, it is one of the few cities whose population still keeps rising.

What I want to note here is that, together with the growth in population, the number of children too is held. Those under 15 rose, rather, from 17,034 in 2000 to 19,712 in 2020. The share aged 65 and over rose in the same period from 11.3% to 20.9%, but it is a gentle level among the cities of the nation. The household-with-children share is 20.6% (2020). The primary schools rose from twelve to thirteen in the 2000s to fourteen in recent years, and in this town where children increase the school network too is gaining thickness. The Childcare Waitlist runs to several dozen in recent years, and there are years, fitting a town of continued growth, in which demand exceeds supply. The Fiscal Capacity Index was 0.91 in fiscal 2023. The figure of a suburban city holding an ever-increasing population and children appears in the numbers. Why it takes this shape cannot be read without going back over the history of the highway and of industry and learning.

Kusatsu’s skeleton is set, first of all, as a junction where two highways met. Kusatsu-juku was the 52nd of the fifty-three stations of the Tokaido, and here the Nakasendo joined the Tokaido. For travelers heading from Edo toward Kyoto and Osaka, it was the fork where two trunk roads met, a keystone of transport where people and goods came and went. Even now the station’s honjin survives as a national historic site, and the guidepost at the fork conveys the parting of the Tokaido and the Nakasendo. This junction where two highways met — here was the town’s starting point.

What changed the town’s character was the siting of industry and learning in the latter half of the twentieth century. In 1969, Matsushita Electric — the present Panasonic — set up a factory for refrigerators and air conditioners on this land. Onto this land, near the great metropolitan sphere and a keystone of transport since the highway era, modern manufacturing gathered. And in 1994, Ritsumeikan University moved its College of Science and Engineering from Kyoto City and opened the Biwako-Kusatsu Campus. In addition to the factories, a new layer — a university campus and the students gathering there — joined the town.

Thus Kusatsu changed its form from a fork of the highways into a suburban city holding industry and learning. The nearness to the great metropolitan sphere, and the convenience of transport since the highway era, drew in factories and a university, and households that work, study and live there keep flowing in. Beginning as a post town where two highways met, having factories placed there, and a university campus opened — this town’s shape stands upon the history of the fork of the highways and of modern industry and learning.

What characterizes Kusatsu is that, in addition to a population that keeps increasing, even the number of children increases. Those under 15 rose, over twenty years, from the seventeen-thousand range to the nineteen-thousand range. Among the many cities in which children greatly thin in twenty-year terms, it is a markedly rare form. One can read that the nearness to the great metropolitan sphere, and the employment and the place of learning that the factories and university produce, keep drawing in child-rearing households.

The numbers of living infrastructure mirror this growth too. The city’s primary schools rose from twelve to thirteen in the 2000s, and in this town where children increase they have grown to fourteen in recent years; while schools decrease in many cities, here they gain thickness, rather. On the other hand, the Childcare Waitlist runs to several dozen in some recent years. This is not the result of children thinning, but a number peculiar to a town of growth, where demand exceeds supply amid continued inflow. While schools increase, there are years in which the childcare places do not keep pace — these two numbers look contradictory read separately, but in a town where people keep flowing in, both happen at once.

Kusatsu holds several functions of its own. One is the history of Kusatsu-juku, the fork-station where the Tokaido and the Nakasendo met, where the honjin survives as a national historic site and conveys to the present the memory of having been a keystone of transport where two highways met. Another is the factories placed in the latter half of the twentieth century and the university campus opened in 1994, which bring to the town the employment of manufacturing and a population layer of students.

Kusatsu is a town where a fork of the highways changed its form into a suburban city holding industry and learning. From a post town where two highways met, to the siting of factories, and then to a university campus — the history of being a keystone of transport, "the fork where the Tokaido and the Nakasendo met," together with the nearness to the great metropolitan sphere, drew in modern industry and learning. Onto the post town where the travelers of Edo paused at the parting of two trunk roads, the factories of the Showa era and the university of the Heisei era are layered from the same foundation, and households that work and study flow in there.