Higashiosaka-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 494,000 (493,940 in 2020). In the five years from 502,784 in 2015, it fell by nearly nine thousand. From a scale that had reached five hundred thousand, it is at the stage of having entered a phase of population decline.

The number of children is decreasing at a faster pace than the total. Those under 15 fell by more than six thousand eight hundred, from 59,078 in 2015 to 52,269 in 2020. Over the same period the share aged 65 and over rose from 26.8% to 27.5%. Three flows — the total population decreasing, the children decreasing faster, and aging advancing — run at once. The household-with-children share is 16.6% (2020), a position somewhat thin in its child-rearing layer for a mid-tier city of the Osaka urban sphere. The land price of the residential area is around 145,000 yen per m², at a high level among the three cities so far, reflecting the siting adjoining Osaka City. The Fiscal Capacity Index is 0.73, a structure that makes up part of standard expenditure with local allocation tax. The Childcare Waitlist rose slightly, from 5 (2024) to 8 (2025). It is an increase amid a decreasing absolute number of children, a number moving with a small range of swing. Why these numbers take this shape cannot be read without going back over the history of the reclaimed land, manufacturing, and the three-city merger.

Higashiosaka’s manufacturing did not grow upon land that was there from the start. In the Edo era, the rerouting of the Yamato River gave birth to a vast reclaimed land in the basin of the old riverbed, and on that artificial flat the cultivation of cotton grew vigorous and in time became the foundation of manufacturing. It is, in the terms of economic geography, a typical case in which an industrial agglomeration begins on the occasion of the alteration of the landform.

The first source of manufacturing is metal. The technique of Kawachi cast metal, said to have begun in the Nara period, grew vigorous from the late Edo era through the Taisho era in Fuse, the present western part of the city, and iron kettles and tea kettles and the like were made. Two local industries, cotton and metal, ran on into the later agglomeration of small workshops. In 1914 the Osaka Electric Tramway (now the Kintetsu Nara Line) opened, and commerce and industry developed a step further upon the axis linking Osaka and Kawachi.

The present city area was born from three cities of differing character becoming one. In 1937 Fuse City, a commercial-industrial area, was established; in 1955 Kawachi City, an industrial area, and Hiraoka City, a residential area, were established. And on February 1, 1967, these three cities merged and Higashiosaka City was born. It is a form in which three areas of differing faces — commerce and industry in the west, industry in the center, residence in the east — were incorporated into one city area. In 1983 the number of factories in the city passed ten thousand and reached its peak, and the city became a "town of manufacturing" with a density of establishments per habitable area among the highest in the nation. Cotton grew on the reclaimed land born from the remaking of the river, it ran on from cast metal to countless small workshops, and three cities of differing character were bound into one — this is the thread of this town’s history.

What characterizes Higashiosaka is that, while the total population fell by nearly nine thousand, the number of children decreased faster, by six thousand eight hundred. Behind the decline of the total population, the layer of children thins faster. The household-with-children share is 16.6%, a position somewhat thin among the mid-tier cities of the Osaka urban sphere, and the flow in which that layer is decreasing further continues.

The Childcare Waitlist rose slightly, from 5 to 8. Since it is an increase amid a decreasing absolute number of children, it makes more sense to read it not as "children increased and supply ran short," but as the result of a small mismatch of supply and demand arising in particular areas or ages. Even in great cities like Osaka City or Kobe City, the waitlist rises and falls by a few each year. Higashiosaka’s movement from 5 to 8 too is within that small range of swing. Children decrease faster, the share of the elderly greatly exceeds a quarter, yet the siting adjoining Osaka supports a certain housing demand — these three advance at once, and the number of the waitlist too moves small within that equilibrium. Take out only one number to read it, and one mistakes the figure of the town.

Higashiosaka holds several functions of its own. One is the agglomeration of manufacturing, springing from the cotton grown on the reclaimed land and the Kawachi cast metal, where countless small workshops stand in rows, with a density of establishments per habitable area among the highest in the nation. From metal processing to precision parts, this agglomeration, in which small factories run on in a division of labor, forms the skeleton of the town’s industry. Another is the Hanazono Rugby Stadium, opened in 1929 as the first stadium in Japan dedicated to rugby, known as the stage of national tournaments.

Higashiosaka, with the Kintetsu Nara Line, the Osaka Line and several other railways running through the city, is sited in direct connection with the Osaka city center. From the manufacturing of the reclaimed land to a core city of the three-city merger — the origin of a flat land born from the rerouting of the river has reloaded a different function in each age. Cotton, cast metal, and small workshops are all, when one traces back, set upon the same ground of the artificial reclaimed land. Even incorporated into the vast urban sphere of the adjoining Osaka City, Higashiosaka continues to be an independent city in the single point of the agglomeration of manufacturing. That this is the core of this town is unchanged even now, when its population of near five hundred thousand has begun to decrease.