Maizuru-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 80,000 (80,336 in 2020). This town’s population holds no step caused by a merger, and has kept falling at a fixed slope, from 94,050 in 2000 toward 2020. Some fourteen thousand over twenty years — not a sharp plunge, but it is within an unceasing shrinkage.

Looking inside, the decline of children is faster than the decline of the total population. Those under 15 fell by nearly four thousand six hundred, over thirty percent, from 14,343 in 2000 to 9,756 in 2020. The share aged 65 and over rose from 21.3% in 2000 to 31.7% in 2020. The household-with-children share is 19.0% (2020), the Childcare Waitlist is zero of late, and the Fiscal Capacity Index was 0.62 in fiscal 2023. The figure of a bay port town, growing thin from the children’s layer first while quietly shrinking, appears in the numbers. Why it takes this shape cannot be read without going back over the history of the naval port and the repatriation.

Maizuru’s skeleton is set by the landform of an intricate bay and by the headquarters of the navy placed there. In 1901, the navy’s only naval district on the Japan Sea side was opened on this land. The naval district was the navy’s headquarters placed at a naval port, a base that defended the bay and held many facilities such as an arsenal, a hospital and a naval-port waterworks. That the intricate ria-coast bay was suited to defense as a naval port is held to be one reason this place was chosen.

The opening of this naval district divided the town in two. What had long flourished as the castle town of Tanabe Castle was West Maizuru, which also holds the history of being the stage of the "Tanabe siege," a preliminary battle of Sekigahara. On the other hand, the eastern side, which had been no more than a small fishing village until then, was parceled out in a grid with the opening of the naval district and was transformed into the modern naval-port city of East Maizuru. The castle town in the west and the naval-port city in the east — it became a town where two urban districts of differing character stand side by side across one bay. In East Maizuru, red-brick warehouses to store military supplies stand in a row, and eight of the twelve surviving are designated national Important Cultural Properties.

And after the defeat, this naval port took on one more role. Maizuru Port, for as long as thirteen years from the war’s end, became a "repatriation port" that received people coming back from Siberia, the former Manchuria and elsewhere. Their number reached about six hundred sixty thousand. The port that had sent soldiers off across the sea became, this time, a port that received people from across the sea. Beginning with the castle town of Tanabe Castle, becoming the naval-port city of the naval district, and after the war becoming a repatriation port — this town’s shape stands upon the history of a naval port and of repatriation.

What characterizes Maizuru is that, not through a merger, the population keeps falling at a fixed slope, and the decline of children exceeds the decline of the total population. While the total population fell by about fifteen percent over twenty years, those under 15 fell by over thirty percent. The population that once supported the naval port gently shrank with the postwar change of role, and onto that the nationwide thinning of births and the outflow of the young generation were layered, growing thin from the children’s layer first — it is the form of shrinkage common to the port towns of the Japan Sea side.

The numbers of living infrastructure mirror this shrinkage too. The primary schools moved at twenty-two until the early 2000s, and thereafter, in step with the decline of children, consolidation advanced, and they have fallen to around eighteen in recent years. This is a shrinkage of the school network reflecting the decline of children itself, not a merger. The Childcare Waitlist has moved at zero of late, but this includes the aspect of being a consequence of the absolute number of children to be entrusted having fallen. The town that flourished as the naval-port city of the naval district and became a repatriation port after the war is now, while holding the memory of a naval port and of repatriation, within a shrinkage that thins from the children’s layer first. Children fall faster than the total population falls, and by that much the aging passes thirty percent — that the shrinkage proceeds from the lower part of the generations first is the reading-point of this town’s numbers.

Maizuru holds several functions of its own. One is West Maizuru, which holds the history of being the castle town of Tanabe Castle, an old urban district that was also the stage of a preliminary battle of Sekigahara. Another is East Maizuru, which was transformed from a fishing village into a grid-pattern naval-port city with the opening of the naval district, where the red-brick warehouses convey that modern memory to the present. And the role of a postwar repatriation port inscribes one more historical layer upon this port. Two urban districts of differing character stand side by side across one bay — this is this town’s structure.

Maizuru is a bay town where the castle town in the west and the naval port in the east stand side by side. From the castle town of Tanabe Castle, to the naval-port city of the naval district, to the postwar repatriation port, and to a port town of the Japan Sea side within shrinkage — the geography "an intricate bay was chosen as a naval port, and a fishing village was transformed into a naval-port city" called the two urban districts of differing character and set the town’s skeleton. The intricate bay was chosen as a naval port, and a quiet fishing village changed its form into a naval-port city. In the west of the bay, the castle town of Tanabe Castle; in the east, the naval port of the naval district. Two urban districts of utterly different upbringing face each other across the same Maizuru Bay to this day.