Neyagawa-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 230,000 (229,733 in 2020). From 250,806 in 2000, about twenty-one thousand were lost over twenty years. That the population has turned to decline, while many suburban cities continue their increase, is first of all this town’s characteristic.

The inside of the ages moves still more clearly. The share aged 65 and over rose from 12.6% in 2000 to 29.6% in 2020, nearing three in ten. Those under 15 fell from 36,376 to 25,895, by more than ten thousand over twenty years. The household-with-children share is low, at 18.7% (2020). The primary schools fell from 27 to 25, and the Fiscal Capacity Index was 0.62 in fiscal 2023, a structure relying on allocation tax since expenditure cannot be covered by its own tax revenue alone. The Childcare Waitlist has moved at zero. The population decreases, aging nears three in ten, and children thin greatly — this form cannot be read apart from the history of a bedroom town that swelled all at once during the high-growth period.

Neyagawa’s skeleton is set upon the railway heading for the Osaka city center and the housing built during the high-growth period. The city is set on the left bank of the Yodo River, about fifteen kilometers from the center of Osaka City and about thirty-five kilometers from the center of Kyoto. The very nearness from which one could commute to the Osaka city center came to decide this town’s fate.

What became the footing was the railway. In 1910, the Keihan Main Line opened and Neyagawa Station was established. This line linking Osaka and Kyoto changed the line-side into a commutable suburb. And what was decisive was the postwar high-growth period. Receiving commuting demand toward the city center, collective danchi and residential areas were built one after another, and Neyagawa became a bedroom town of Osaka. In the 1960s, an explosive population increase of twenty thousand a year continued. In a short period, households of the same generation flow in all at once — the rapid swelling common to bedroom towns of the high-growth period.

But a town that swelled all at once matures all at once. When the wave of move-in receded, new inflow thinned, and the generation that moved in first raised its years as it was. Children became independent and left the town, and the parent generation moved to the layer of the elderly. The momentum that increased by twenty thousand a year during the high-growth period reversed, over half a century, into population decline and aging. The course a town that swelled to commute to the city center traces after the wave of move-in has passed — this town’s shape stands upon the history of a bedroom town that swelled all at once.

What characterizes Neyagawa is that, while the total population fell by twenty-one thousand over twenty years, the number of children fell by more than ten thousand. It appears in the living-infrastructure numbers as a steady shrinkage. The primary schools within the city fell from 27 to 25, and the kindergartens fell from 17 to 8, less than half. Matching the great thinning of children, the facilities for children shrink.

The Childcare Waitlist has moved at zero. But as is seen repeatedly in regional cities where children thin, the aspect is strong that this is the result of the absolute number of children greatly decreasing so that capacity gained room. One must read the figure of a waitlist of zero not only as "ease of child-rearing," but as a set with the background that the number of children itself greatly thins. The generation that moved in all at once during the high-growth period ages all at once, and after their children became independent and left the town, the inflow of new households thins. The population decreases, aging nears three in ten, and children thin greatly — the figure of a mature bedroom town, where several flows advance at once, appears in the numbers. Take out the single word "zero" on its own, and one misses the shrinkage of children advancing behind it.

Neyagawa holds functions of its own. One is the line-side residential area through which the Keihan Main Line runs the central part of the city, the urban district swollen to house those commuting to the Osaka city center. Another is the collective danchi and residential areas built during the high-growth period, where the generation that moved in all at once forms, as it is, the age structure of the town.

Neyagawa is a town that swelled all at once during the high-growth period in order to commute to the Osaka city center. As a suburb of the Keihan line-side, it took in people at twenty thousand a year in a short period, and now it is in the mature phase after that wave of move-in has receded. The condition that "there was a flatland fifteen kilometers from the Osaka city center on the left bank of the Yodo River" called in the railway and the danchi, gave birth to move-in all at once, and then reversed into aging all at once. The flatland fifteen kilometers from the Osaka city center on the left bank of the Yodo River called in the railway and the danchi, gave birth to move-in all at once at twenty thousand a year, and in time reversed into aging all at once. Not the landform, but the condition of nearness to the city center, has decided in turn both the swelling and the maturing of this town.