Kakogawa-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 261,000 (260,878 in 2020). In the five years from 267,435 in 2015, it fell by more than six thousand five hundred. A mid-tier city of Higashi-Harima, Hyogo, has entered a clear phase of decline.

The number of children is thinning faster than the total. Those under 15 fell by nearly four thousand, from 36,724 in 2015 to 32,871 in 2020. Over the same period the share aged 65 and over rose from 25.0% to 27.7%, and aging is advancing. The household-with-children share stands at 22.0% (2020). The land price of the residential area is around 72,000 yen per m², a level low even among the cities of Hyogo. The Fiscal Capacity Index is 0.86, a level that can cover much of standard expenditure with its own tax revenue. The Childcare Waitlist fell from 12 (2024) to 6 (2025). What I want to note here is that, amid a flow in which the absolute number of children fell by nearly four thousand, the waitlist too halved — this too may include the effect of demand having thinned on its side. Why it takes this shape cannot be read without going back over the history of the reservoirs and the river water.

Kakogawa’s history is a history of people contriving to cope with insufficient water. The Inamino plateau, which spreads from the Akashi River to the Kako River, was originally a land poor in water, and from of old in this neighborhood people opened cultivated land by digging reservoirs to hold water and drawing from them to moisten the paddy fields. The whole of Higashi-Harima has a share of reservoirs relative to paddy area among the highest in the nation — it is a region where the scarcity of water shaped the very landscape. It is a case in which the constraint of geography gave birth to an artificial water network of reservoirs.

That "water," in the modern era, drew in a different industry. In 1899, Nihon Keori — later Nikke — built a mill at Kakogawa and began operation. One reason for the choice of site was the soft water of the Kako River, suited to the manufacture of woolen textiles; another was the convenience of transport by the Sanyo Main Line. Onto the plateau where reservoir irrigation had supported the water of farming, industry relying on the river water was now sited.

Together with the mill, the town too changed its form. In step with operation, a group of company-housing buildings was laid out, and it became one example of a modern residential area and town plan from the late Meiji to the early Showa era. And in 1984, Nikke Park Town, a commercial complex, opened on the site of the mill, and the area where woolen cloth had once been woven changed its shape into a place of shopping. The reservoirs called in farming, the water of the Kako River called in industry, and the site of that industry called in commerce — upon this history, in which the single condition of water set a different industry in each age, the town of Kakogawa stands.

What characterizes Kakogawa is that, while the total population fell by six thousand five hundred, the number of children decreased by nearly four thousand. The form in which the decline of children stands out more than the decline of the total clearly shows that a mid-tier city of Higashi-Harima has entered a phase of shrinking. The share of the elderly rose from 25.0% to 27.7%, and the household-with-children share stands at 22.0%. In a town where the absolute number of children thins greatly, the demand for childcare and schools too turns downward.

The Childcare Waitlist halved, from 12 (2024) to 6 (2025). But it is too quick to read this only as "the child-rearing environment greatly improved in one year." As touched upon in the Yao article too, a decrease in the waitlist can be the effect, at the same time, both of receivers having increased and of the absolute number of children having thinned so that demand fell. In Kakogawa, where those under 15 have fallen by nearly four thousand over five years, the share due to demand having thinned is not small. Children decrease, the share of the elderly rises, and the waitlist too decreases — in a town where these several flows advance at once, the meaning of one number can be read only together with the direction of the population behind it. A number, taken alone, does not fix its meaning.

Kakogawa holds several functions of its own. One is the irrigation network of reservoirs spread over the Inamino plateau, which, as an artificial water network that opened paddy fields on a water-poor land, still shapes the landscape of Higashi-Harima. Another is the lineage of the woolen-textile industry sited relying on the water of the Kako River, which leaves its trace in the town as the Nikke group of company-housing buildings and as Nikke Park Town, born on the site of the mill.

Kakogawa is neither a castle town nor a temple-gate town, but a town opened by people contriving to handle water on a water-poor plateau, where that water in time called in industry. The reservoirs, the woolen mill, and the commercial complex on the site of the mill are all, when one traces back, set upon the same condition of how to secure water. The surfaces of the reservoirs glinting here and there on the plateau, the looms turned by the soft water of the riverside, and the line of shoppers standing on the site of that mill — the same single thread of water has mirrored three scenes across the ages.