Kyoto

In the most recent Population Census the population is about 1.464 million (1,463,723 in 2020). Over the five years from 1,475,183 in 2015 it lost more than ten thousand. Already a large designated city beyond 1.46 million, it has passed the stage of growth, and the total has begun to fall.

The number of children is thinning even faster than the total. Those under 15 fell from 162,141 (2015) to 153,005 (2020), more than nine thousand fewer in five years. Over the same period the share aged 65 and over rose from 25.8% to 26.9%, already past a quarter. Households with children make up 15.4% (2020). The residential land price is around 108,000 yen per m², a lower level than Kobe, seen later. The Fiscal Capacity Index is 0.80 — a structure in which the city cannot cover all of its standard expenditure from its own tax revenue alone and fills the rest through the local allocation tax. The childcare waitlist has fallen to 0. What is worth keeping in view, though, is that these are averages for a city of 1.46 million. Kyoto is divided into eleven wards, differing greatly in character from the central Nakagyo and Shimogyo to the northern reaches of Ukyo and Sakyo in the mountains. The gaps between wards are flattened out and do not appear in this single figure. Why the city takes this shape cannot be read without going back to the origins of the Heian-kyo grid and the basin.

Kyoto’s skeleton was decided by lines drawn by human hands twelve hundred years ago and by the mountains that ring them. In 794, Emperor Kanmu moved the capital to this site. Modeling it on the Tang capital of Chang’an, a grid (jobo) was laid out, dividing a rectangle of roughly 4.5 km east–west and 5.2 km north–south into a checkerboard of blocks. The skeleton of Kyoto’s present streets was set down then. In the terms of economic geography, it is an old case of a city established by design rather than arising naturally.

The condition that made the city work was its landform. The Kyoto urban area lies in a basin ringed by the Kitayama, Higashiyama and Nishiyama mountains on three sides, with the Kamo River running through it north to south. Being ringed by mountains on three sides suited defense; sitting at the center of the archipelago and being blessed with river water gave grounds for placing the capital here. At the same time, the basin is a constraint that physically limits the range over which the built-up area can spread. The condition for a city to grow is utterly different from the plateau of Sagamihara, where flatland continues without end.

Within that basin, industry too accumulated. Silk weaving flourished here from the Heian period, and the area where the western army’s general encamped during the Onin War (1467–77) later became the place name “Nishijin,” and the cloth woven there came to be called Nishijin textiles. In the Meiji era the city took in Western techniques such as the Jacquard loom from Europe, grafting traditional weaving onto modern industry. And today, the largest industry in Kyoto is not tourism but manufacturing. Traditional industries such as Nishijin textiles, Yuzen dyeing and Kyo-yaki ware, together with the modern high-tech industry connected to them, support the economy of the basin city. The grid copied from the Tang, the mountains on three sides, twelve hundred years of weaving — Kyoto’s numbers stand on an accumulation of design and history more than on natural landform.

What characterizes Kyoto is that while the total population fell by ten thousand, the number of children fell even faster, by nine thousand. And Kyoto’s waitlist is 0 children. What must not be misread here is what this “zero” means. In a city where households with children stay at 15.4% and the absolute number of those under 15 thins by nine thousand in five years, the total demand for childcare shrinks. Unlike Urayasu, which neared zero by desperately catching supply up to rising children, the underlying dynamics of the same “zero waitlist” are reversed. Kyoto’s zero fits the figures better read as the result of supply and demand balancing downward as the absolute number of children thins.

The elderly share is already past a quarter, and the absolute number of children is steadily falling. In a 1.46-million city where several such flows run at once, the childcare figures too converge on small values. And this too is an average across eleven wards: between central wards into which many students flow and mountain wards where aging advances, the circumstances of children and childcare cannot be the same. A single average alone does not read through to the circumstances of a city split ward by ward.

Kyoto holds many functions of its own. One is the built-up area itself, twelve hundred years stacked from the starting point of the Heian-kyo grid, where the checkerboard streets and the temples, shrines and historic sites that remain among them still inscribe the city’s origin. Another is the concentration of traditional industry represented by Nishijin textiles, Yuzen dyeing and Kyo-yaki ware, and of the modern manufacturing connected to it, supporting the city’s economy behind its face as a tourist destination. Many universities are also located in the city, and students flow in and out in cycles.

Within the vessel of a basin ringed by mountains on three sides, Kyoto has stacked the functions of capital, weaving and learning across eras. The offices of Heian-kyo, the looms of Nishijin, the modern factories and the universities all rest, in the end, on the same limited basin. Unlike a city where broad flatland continues without end, this vessel, its room to grow limited by the mountains, had no choice but to layer new functions many times over on old ones. Looms were set down right beside where the capital’s offices stood, and modern factories and universities cut in next to them — that thickness of stacked strata makes the density of today’s Kyoto.