Ibaraki-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 288,000 (287,730 in 2020). From 260,648 in 2000 it rose by some twenty-seven thousand over twenty years and still holds its increase.

What I want to see here is that the number of children has not broken down greatly. Those under 15 hold their number, with a slight increase, from 38,686 in 2000 to 39,221 in 2020. Over the same period the share aged 65 and over rose from 12.4% to 23.9%, but for a city whose population keeps increasing it is gentle aging. The household-with-children share is 22.6% (2020), at a level befitting a residential city of Hokusetsu. The primary schools have hardly changed at 32 for more than twenty years. One more thing that catches the eye is the Fiscal Capacity Index, at 0.97 in fiscal 2023, a level near one, able to cover nearly all expenditure with its own tax revenue. The waitlist too is, in recent years, around a dozen, small for the scale of a two-hundred-eighty-thousand city. Why it takes this shape cannot be read without going back over the history of the highway and the castle town.

Ibaraki’s skeleton is the geography itself of being set between the two capitals of Kyoto and Osaka. In the Heian period, traffic on the Saigoku Road (the old San’yo Road), running east-west across the north of the city, grew busy. On this road linking the capital and the western provinces, the town grew up as a relay point where people and goods passed. It is the typical case, in the terms of economic geography, of a city set upon the flow of traffic.

In the Muromachi period, Ibaraki Castle, the foundation of the town’s prosperity, was built. Among the castle lords are ranged the names of warriors such as Nakagawa Kiyohide and Katagiri Katsumoto, and people gathered in the castle town. Through the Siege of Osaka the castle was abandoned, and thereafter it became a directly held domain of the Edo shogunate. Yet even after losing the castle, the character of being a strategic point of traffic linking Kyoto and Osaka, and Tanba and Osaka, did not change. Along the Saigoku Road the Koriyama-juku honjin (commonly the "Camellia Honjin") was placed, where alternate-attendance daimyo took lodging. The position of being "between" the two great cities, changing its role from castle town to post town, kept calling the flow of people into this town.

In the modern era and after, the relay point of the highway passes its role to a town of railways and housing. The siting of being nearly midway between Kyoto and Osaka worked strongly as a suburban residential area from which one could commute to either city center. A strategic point caught between two great cities holds people and goods in the age of the highway and becomes a place of dwelling from which one can commute either way in the age of the metropolitan sphere — this town’s shape stands upon the history of being set between Kyoto and Osaka.

What characterizes Ibaraki is that, while the population rose by twenty-seven thousand over twenty years, the number of children is nearly held and the Fiscal Capacity Index too is held near one. It appears in the living-infrastructure numbers as gentle stability. The primary schools have long not moved from 32, and in this town where the number of children does not break down, the school network too hardly sways.

A Fiscal Capacity Index level of 0.97 means it can cover nearly all expenditure with its own tax revenue. One can read that, working as a suburban residential area from which one can commute to both Kyoto and Osaka, it keeps gathering working households, and that the individual resident tax rising from them supports the thickness of tax revenue. It is a structure in contrast to the strong dependence on allocation tax common in fiscally weak regional cities. But one must read together with this that the aging rate is rising from 12.4% to 23.9%. Even if it now holds its increase and youthfulness, once the households that moved in all at once raise their years, aging may eventually accelerate. Children are held, finances are independent, and aging advances gently — these three are not separate facts, but the separate appearances of one flow, in which working households keep gathering in a siting from which one can commute to two city centers.

Ibaraki holds functions of its own. One is its position of being nearly midway between Kyoto and Osaka, with the character of a suburban residential area from which one can commute to either city center. Another is the historical layer that grew up as the relay point of the Saigoku Road and the castle town of Ibaraki Castle, where, like the Koriyama-juku honjin (the Camellia Honjin), facilities that supported the traffic of the highway still remain.

Ibaraki is a town that grew up as a strategic point set between two great cities. From a relay point of the highway, to a castle town, and then to a residential city on the Kyoto-Osaka stretch — the condition of "being between Kyoto and Osaka" has reloaded a different function in each age. The traffic of the Saigoku Road, the castle town of Ibaraki Castle, and the metropolitan-sphere residential area are all, when one traces back, set upon the same position of being between the two capitals. Rather than following the bounty of the landform, the very position caught between two capitals has held the traffic of the highway, raised the castle town, and now called in commuting dwellings. The same position reloads its role in each age.