Moriguchi-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 143,000 (143,096 in 2020). Its course is a gentle decline. From 152,298 in 2000, through 147,465 in 2005, 146,697 in 2010, 143,042 in 2015, to 143,096 in 2020, about nine thousand were lost over twenty years.

Looking inside, the figure of a mature residential-industrial city abutting a great city appears. The share aged 65 and over rose from 15.3% in 2000 to 28.6% in 2020, nearing three in ten. The household-with-children share is somewhat low, at 16.8% in 2020, and the Childcare Waitlist is zero in 2024 and one in 2025. The Fiscal Capacity Index was 0.68 in fiscal 2023, a middling level able to cover nearly seven-tenths of expenditure with its own tax revenue. The figure of the post-town on the highway to the capital, advancing in aging while gently shedding population, appears in the numbers. Why it takes this shape cannot be read without going back over the history of the post town, the slender daikon, and electricity.

This town’s skeleton is set by the post town on the highway linking the capital and Osaka and by the factory of electricity that moved into the land. The beginning layer is the post town. In the Edo era, the highway linking the capital and Osaka ran through this town, and it flourished as its post town. On this land of the post town, a kind of daikon that grows slender and long was made, and the name of the post town became the name of that daikon. That daikon, pickled in sake lees, is still known throughout the nation as a pickle bearing the town’s name. The post town on the highway, and the slender daikon raised in that land — this is the beginning figure of this town.

Upon this post town, the factory of electricity of the modern era overlapped. In the early Showa era, a company that had made electrical instruments in the city district of Osaka moved its factory to a neighboring town and to this town. In one corner of this town, that company’s dry-cell battery factory was placed, and the town came to hold the face of a place of electrical manufacture. This land, abutting a great city on the left bank of the Yodo River, has walked as a town holding factories while being a residential area near the city center. The road to becoming a city mirrors this town too. In the 1940s this land became the eleventh city in Osaka Prefecture through merger with a neighboring town. The post town on the highway to the capital, the pickled slender daikon, the factory of electricity, and the mature residential industry — this town’s shape stands upon the history of a post town and electricity that a land abutting a great city on the left bank of the Yodo River held.

What characterizes Moriguchi is that, holding the history of a post town on the highway and a factory of electricity, in recent years it gently sheds population and advances in aging. From 152,298 in 2000 to 143,096 in 2020, about nine thousand were lost over twenty years. Even in this town, which once held many households as a residential area near the city center abutting a great city, one can read that the housing aged, the scale of households grew smaller as children became independent, and newly settling young households could not completely fill that in, so the population gently fell. That the share aged 65 and over neared three in ten at 28.6% in 2020 is its expression.

On the other hand, the Childcare Waitlist stays small, at zero in 2024 and one in 2025. That the household-with-children share is somewhat low, at 16.8% in 2020, can also be read as the flip side of the town’s age rising. A Fiscal Capacity Index of 0.68 is a level able to cover nearly seven-tenths of expenditure with its own tax revenue, in the middle. One can read that the income of the households living in the residential area, and the factories remaining in the town, support the tax base at the middle. The advantage of the position of being near the city center once called many households into this town, and those households now, raising their years, push up the age of the whole town — the gentle fall of population, the aging nearing three in ten, and the middling finances are the front and back of this same flow of time.

Moriguchi holds several functions of its own. One is the post town on the highway linking the capital and Osaka, with the history of the country of the slender, long daikon that bore the post town’s name and its pickle. Another is its character of having, in the early Showa era, welcomed the factory of a company that made electrical instruments and become a mature residential-industrial city abutting a great city on the left bank of the Yodo River. And the landform of abutting a great city on the left bank of the Yodo River called both the post town on the highway to the capital and the factories and housing near the city center into this land.

Moriguchi is the town where the post town on the highway held a slender daikon and a factory of electricity. From the post town on the highway linking the capital and Osaka, to the slender daikon bearing the post town’s name, the factory of electricity, and the mature residential industry — the geography of "abutting a great city on the left bank of the Yodo River" set the post town on the highway to the capital and later called in the factories and housing near the city center. The name of the Edo post town remained as the name of a kind of daikon that grows slender and long and its pickle. To that same town, in the early Showa era, the factory of a company that made electrical instruments moved in. The pickle, a remnant of the post town, and the modern manufacture of electricity overlap in one town on the left bank of the Yodo River.