Fukuchiyama-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 77,000 (77,306 in 2020). What I want to note first here is that the increase of about twelve thousand, from 67,858 in 2005 to 79,652 in 2010, is not the result of a natural increase. It owes to the former Fukuchiyama City absorbing three towns in 2006, and the effect of the merger appears in the 2010 figure. The former Fukuchiyama City was about sixty-eight thousand, and by absorbing the surrounding towns both its city area and its population widened.

On top of that, looking inside the post-merger figures, from 79,652 in 2010 to 77,306 in 2020, it stayed to a decline of a little over two thousand over ten years, roughly close to level. Those under 15 fell by about one thousand two hundred, from 11,283 in 2010 after the merger to 10,041 in 2020. The aging rate rose from 19.9% in 2000 to 29.7% in 2020. The household-with-children share is 20.5%, the Childcare Waitlist is zero of late, and the Fiscal Capacity Index was 0.51 in fiscal 2023. The figure of a castle town of Tanba, holding its total within a city area widened by the merger while mounting its age, appears in the numbers. Why it takes this shape cannot be read without going back over the history of Mitsuhide’s castle town and the railway.

Fukuchiyama’s skeleton is set by a single castle built on a hill jutting out over the Yura River. In 1579, Akechi Mitsuhide, who pacified Tanba on the order of Oda Nobunaga, built Fukuchiyama Castle on this hill facing the Yura River and built the castle town at the same time. Mitsuhide is said to have exempted the jishisen, the tax on residences, for the development of commerce. Further, he is said to have used the earth produced in building the castle town to build the river’s embankment and protect the town from floods. The river and the castle set this town’s first skeleton.

That castle town added one character entering the modern era. The railway. In 1899, the Hankaku Railway, the forerunner of the later Fukuchiyama Line, opened, linking Osaka with the southern entrance of this land. In time this land became a junction of transport where the San’in Main Line and the Maizuru Line and others branched, and came to be called "a railway town." In 1950, one of only twenty-seven railway management bureaus placed throughout the nation was set up on this land, governing several surrounding lines. The castle town of the basin became a keystone of transport where the lines branched.

And the present city took its present city area in 2006, when the former Fukuchiyama City absorbed Miwa, Yakuno and Oe Towns. Beginning with Akechi Mitsuhide’s castle town, warding off floods with the Yura River’s embankment, becoming a junction of the railway, and widened by the merger — this town’s shape stands upon the history of a castle town and a railway.

What characterizes Fukuchiyama is that, while holding the post-merger total population roughly level, inside it children gently decline and the aging advances. That the total fell by only a little over two thousand in the ten post-merger years can be read as the expression of the transport junction of being a junction of the railway having gathered people and functions to this town as the center of the Tanba region. On the other hand, behind that, those under 15 fell by about one thousand two hundred, and the aging rate rose by ten points in twenty years. Even where the total is held, its inside surely mounts its age.

The numbers of living infrastructure are inscribed with the merger. The primary schools were eighteen in 2005 before the merger, but rose to twenty-seven with the merger of 2006, as the absorbed towns’ school networks were bundled. Thereafter, in step with the decline of children, consolidation advanced, and by 2023 they had fallen to fourteen. It is a form in which the widened school network was greatly folded up to match the number of children. The Childcare Waitlist has resolved to zero of late. The town that opened as the castle town of Akechi Mitsuhide and became a junction of the railway now, in the city area widened by the merger, quietly turns over its generations while holding its total. The face number of a level total covers the decline of children and the aging proceeding inside it — here it is better not to jump to a conclusion from the single face character alone.

Fukuchiyama holds several functions of its own. One is the history of being the castle town Akechi Mitsuhide built on a hill of the Yura River, where the early-modern design — warding off floods with the river’s embankment, gathering trade by exempting the jishisen — carries on into the skeleton of the present urban district. Another is the character of "a railway town" where several lines branch, which gives this town the transport junction of being the center of the Tanba region. And it bears the Yura River, which holds both faces of blessing and flood.

Fukuchiyama is a basin town where a castle town became a junction of lines. From Akechi Mitsuhide’s castle town, to flood control by the Yura River’s embankment, to a junction of the railway, and to the center of Tanba widened by the merger — the geography and history "a castle town was built on a hill facing a river, and later the lines branched here" called the junction of a castle town and a railway, and set the town’s skeleton. Mitsuhide built a castle on a hill facing the Yura River and raised a castle town, restrained the river’s flooding with an embankment, and in that same basin the lines later parted in many directions. The streets of the castle town and the lines stretching in four directions are woven into one at the center of Tanba.