Uji-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 180,000 (179,630 in 2020). It fell by over five thousand in the five years from 184,678 in 2015. Though it is the second-largest in Kyoto Prefecture after Kyoto City, it is a city that has entered the declining side.

What I want to note here is that the number of children thins faster than the total. Those under 15 fell by over two thousand, from 24,236 (2015) to 21,985 (2020). In the same period the share aged 65 and over rose from 26.8% to 30.0%, entering the stage of one in three being elderly. On the other hand, the household-with-children share is 21.7% (2020), the highest among the three cities taken up this time. The Official Land Price for residential land is around 122,000 yen per m². The Fiscal Capacity Index is 0.70 (2023), far below 1.0, in a structure that supplements a considerable part of standard expenditure with the local allocation tax. The Childcare Waitlist is zero (2025). The population declines, children decline faster, yet the household-with-children share is high and the waitlist is zero — the reason these several numbers coexist cannot be read without going back over the history of temples and shrines, literature, tea and the bedtown.

Uji’s skeleton is made where a postwar residential city was layered upon a land of a thousand years of faith, literature and tea. The first foundation is faith. In 1052, Fujiwara no Yorimichi founded Byodo-in on this land, and the next year, 1053, the Amida hall (the Phoenix Hall) was completed. This land, near the capital and blessed with the water and green of the Uji River, was chosen as a villa land where Heian nobles copied the scenery of the Pure Land onto the earth. What is called, in historical geography, "a land of noble pleasure-touring and faith opening near the capital" is this town’s starting point.

The second is literature. This area across the Uji River became the stage of "the Ten Chapters of Uji," the last ten chapters of "The Tale of Genji." The very land of Uji — a little away from the capital, yet of one ground with it — is chosen as the stage-setting of the tale.

The third is tea. Myoe is said to have brought tea to Uji in the early Kamakura period, and by the mid-Muromachi period the tea of Uji was recognized as the highest. In the Edo period the tea masters of Uji gained the privilege of presenting tea to the shogun, establishing its standing as a tea-producing region. And the fourth is the postwar residential development. In 1951, Higashi-Uji Town, Uji Town and five other towns and villages merged to take city status (the population then about thirty-eight thousand), and from the latter half of the 1960s the population surged as a Keihanshin residential city. The JR Nara Line and the Keihan Uji Line run through the city, putting it within the commuter sphere of Kyoto and Osaka. From the temple gate, to a land of literature, to a tea-producing region, and to a Keihanshin bedtown — a land of a thousand years of culture has layered the function of a residential city after the war.

What characterizes Uji is that, while the total population falls by over five thousand, the number of children falls by over two thousand, faster than the total. In a town that gathered people all at once as a Keihanshin bedtown in the latter half of the 1960s, the young households of that time age as they are, so the share of the elderly reaches three in ten and the children’s generation moves to the thinning side.

On the other hand, the Childcare Waitlist is zero (2025). What must not be misread here is that a zero waitlist does not necessarily mean only that childcare is ample. In a town where the absolute number of children is falling by over two thousand, demand for childcare itself shrinks, so supply more readily catches up with demand. There is a possibility that Uji’s zero too stands upon the same structure as the "zero as a result of the absolute number of children thinning" seen in declining regional cities. That said, the household-with-children share is 21.7%, the highest of the three cities, and it is also a town that keeps holding young households to a degree. Children decline faster, the elderly pass three in ten, the waitlist is zero, yet the household-with-children share is high — taken one at a time these look to face the opposite ways, but only by reading several together does the town’s outline form.

Uji holds several functions of its own. One is a land of a thousand years of faith and culture, represented by the Phoenix Hall of Byodo-in, where temples and shrines and places connected with "The Tale of Genji" remain as historic sites and keep conveying the town’s origin to the present. Another is its face as a tea-producing region since the Middle Ages, where the name of Uji tea still passes nationwide as the name of a producing region.

In transport, the JR Nara Line and the Keihan Uji Line run through the city and form the commuting axis linking Kyoto City and the direction of Osaka. With the residential development from the latter half of the 1960s, Uji strengthened its character as a Keihanshin bedtown. From a land of faith and pleasure-touring, to the stage of literature, to a tea-producing region, and further to a Keihanshin residential city — the condition "a land along the Uji River near the capital" has loaded a different function age by age. Byodo-in, the tea gardens, and the postwar residential land are all, in origin, set upon the same siting, near the capital and blessed with water and green. This position adjoining Kyoto City has called, in turn, a different role age by age — from a villa land of nobles, to a tea-producing region, to a Keihanshin commuter residential land.