Himeji-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 530,000 (530,495 in 2020). In the five years from 535,664 in 2015, it fell by about five thousand. While holding a scale of over five hundred thousand, the population is at the stage of having moved from increase to a landing.

The number of children is decreasing at a faster pace than the total. Those under 15 fell by more than five thousand eight hundred, from 75,155 in 2015 to 69,356 in 2020. Over the same period the share aged 65 and over rose from 25.1% to 26.8%. Behind the total population entering a landing, the inside is steadily shifting its center of gravity toward the elderly. The household-with-children share is 21.8% (2020), holding a certain measure of its child-rearing layer for a five-hundred-thousand city. The land price of the residential area is around 82,050 yen per m². The Fiscal Capacity Index is 0.85, a level able to cover much of standard expenditure with its own tax revenue. The Childcare Waitlist fell slightly, from 18 (2024) to 16 (2025). It has not reached zero, but it is a number moving with a small range of swing amid a thinning absolute number of children. Why these numbers take this shape cannot be read without going back over the history of the castle town and coastal industry.

In Himeji, two grounds of differing ages overlap. The old layer is the castle. The castle itself was built in the fourteenth century, and after Toyotomi Hideyoshi pacified Harima in 1580 it was remade into an early-modern castle, and a large castle town was formed to the south of the castle. And in 1600 Ikeda Terumasa entered the castle, and the following year a great renovation, taking eight years, completed the present five-tiered great keep. As with the castle town of Okayama, the town plan drawn by the power of a daimyo set the center of the town.

Through the Edo era, Himeji was the political and economic center of Harima, governed by fudai and shinpan daimyo. The development of new fields and salt fields advanced, and iron-smithing, cotton, and — under the mercantile policy of the Himeji domain — the leather industry called Himeji leather grew greatly. The castle town early took on the character of a place where manufacturing agglomerated.

Entering the modern era, with the enforcement of city status in 1889, the carriage road from Ikuno to Shikama Port and Shikama Port were put in order, and the San’yo Railway and the Bantan Railway opened. In 1923 the Kobe-Himeji Electric Railway (now the Sanyo Electric Railway Main Line) opened, and Kobe and Harima were linked by electric train. And in 1939 an ironworks began operation on the coast, and Himeji overlaid the face of a heavy-industry city upon the castle town. From the industries of the castle town to the ironworks of the coast, Himeji has renewed the ground of manufacturing in each age. In 1993 the castle itself, together with Horyu-ji, was inscribed as Japan’s first World Cultural Heritage, and eight structures including the great keep are designated national treasures.

What characterizes Himeji is that, while the total population fell by five thousand, the number of children decreased faster, by five thousand eight hundred. Behind the landing of the total population, the layer of children thins faster. The household-with-children share is 21.8%, holding a certain measure of its child-rearing layer compared with cities of the same scale, but the flow in which the absolute number of that layer is decreasing has not stopped.

The Childcare Waitlist fell slightly, from 18 to 16. It has not been pushed all the way down to zero as in Kawasaki City or Urayasu City, but it can be read as a number moving small around where supply and demand are nearly in balance, amid a thinning absolute number of children. What I want to be careful of here is that to read the fall of the waitlist only as "childcare grew fuller" may miss the thread. If behind it the number of children fell by five thousand eight hundred, the contribution of the demand side loosening cannot be ignored either. Children decrease faster, the share of the elderly exceeds a quarter, yet the decline of the total population stays gentle — in a five-hundred-thousand city where these advance at once, the number of the waitlist too is held within a small range of swing. This number too, unless read together with its background, has its meaning mistaken.

Himeji holds several functions of its own. One is Himeji Castle, inscribed in 1993 as Japan’s first World Cultural Heritage, with eight structures including the great keep designated national treasures; this castle, which continued to be the center of the castle town, inscribes the town’s origin on the map. Another is the agglomeration of manufacturing on the coast, running on from the Himeji leather of the Edo era to the modern ironworks. Further, Himeji Station, as the traffic node of the Harima region where the Sanyo Shinkansen and conventional lines gather, has become the gateway to the whole of western Harima.

Himeji has renewed, with a different function in each age, its origin as the center of Harima set as a castle town. From the industries of the castle town to the heavy industry of the coast, and further to a core city of Harima holding a World Heritage castle — upon the skeleton of a castle town that spread around the white castle, the new fields, the salt fields, the leather, and the ironworks are all set upon the same ground of the Harima Plain. The center that the great keep set four hundred years ago still does not move. It is a town where the origin as a castle town has called in a new function for as many ages as there have been.