Kashihara-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 121,000 (120,922 in 2020). This city’s population, not a step due to a large merger, struck a gentle peak from 125,005 in 2000 through 124,728 in 2005 and 125,605 in 2010, and through 124,111 in 2015 has begun to descend gently in recent years to 120,922 in 2020. A town in the southern part of the Nara Basin is just turning from a level peak toward decrease.

Looking inside, the figure of a core city of Nara appears. The share aged 65 and over is 28.5% in 2020, approaching three in ten, and the household-with-children share is 20.5%. The Childcare Waitlist is zero in 2024 and sixty-eight in 2025, increasing sharply in recent years. The Fiscal Capacity Index was 0.70 in fiscal 2023, a level higher than the middle for a regional city, able to cover about seven-tenths of expenditure with its own tax revenue. The figure of the town of the founding myth and the first capital, decreasing its population gently while keeping fiscal strength higher than the middle, appears in the numbers. Why it takes this shape cannot be read without going back over the history of the shrine and Fujiwara-kyo.

Kashihara’s skeleton is set by the geography of the southern part of the Nara Basin, surrounded by the Yamato Sanzan, and by the memory of having been the center of this country in antiquity. The Kojiki and Nihon Shoki record that Emperor Jimmu, said to be the first emperor, acceded at the palace of this Kashihara. From the end of the Edo era this land drew attention as the land of the founding, and in 1890 Kashihara Shrine was founded as that place. The founding myth is inscribed in the town’s name and origin.

In the same basin, this country in antiquity placed a full-fledged capital. In 694, Fujiwara-kyo, the first full-fledged capital city in Japan built by the jobo system — the mechanism of dividing the urban districts into a grid by roads — was constructed in the land of Kashihara. This capital, moved from Asuka, was kept until the capital moved to Heijo-kyo in 710, and is said to have held twenty or thirty thousand people. The first full-fledged step of Japan’s town planning was taken in this land. The Yamato Sanzan — Mount Unebi, Mount Miminashi, and Mount Amanokagu — surround this ancient capital and are now a national place of scenic beauty.

In later ages too, this town remained a land where people and goods gathered. Imai-cho, born in the Warring States era as a temple-precinct town of the Ikko sect, after disarmament flourished as a city of commerce and industry, and was even called "Sakai of the sea, Imai of the land." Beginning with the founding myth, with the first full-fledged capital placed, and holding the merchant town of Imai-cho — the shape of this town stands upon the history of the Nara Basin, which was the center of this country in antiquity.

What characterizes Kashihara is that a core city of Nara, which long kept the 120,000s, has in recent years crossed its peak and begun to decrease gently. Taking 125,605 in 2010 as one peak, nearly five thousand were lost thereafter to 2020. The structure can be read in this number, in which a town that gathered population after the war, as the central city of the southern Nara Basin linked by rail toward Osaka, turns to decrease amid the maturity of its residential areas and the falling birthrate. That the share aged 65 and over approaches three in ten is the reverse side of that maturity.

Even so, fiscal strength is kept higher than the middle. A Fiscal Capacity Index of 0.70 is a level able to cover about seven-tenths of expenditure with its own tax revenue, high for a regional city. It can be read that the commercial and administrative functions gathered as the central city of the southern Nara Basin give thickness to the tax base. On the other hand, the Childcare Waitlist increased sharply, from zero in 2024 to sixty-eight in 2025, suggesting that a change may have arisen in the supply and demand of childcare — the movement of this one year is a number to watch closely. The population crossed the peak, aging approaches three in ten, fiscal strength is higher than the middle, and to that is added the sharp rise of the waitlist — cut these out by a single number, and the figure of the town is mistaken. Only together with the circumstances behind them does the image form.

Kashihara holds several functions of its own. One is the history of the land of the founding, recorded by the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki as the place of the first emperor’s accession and where Kashihara Shrine stands, holding an origin inscribed in myth. Another is the character of the land where Fujiwara-kyo, the first full-fledged capital city in Japan, was placed, keeping the first step of town planning and the memory of the Yamato Sanzan that surround it. And Imai-cho, called "Sakai of the sea, Imai of the land," adds to this town the face of a city of commerce and industry.

Kashihara is a town of the Nara Basin that was the center of this country in antiquity. From the land of the founding myth, to the first full-fledged capital of Fujiwara-kyo, and to a land holding the merchant town of Imai-cho — within the basin surrounded by the three mountains of Unebi, Miminashi, and Amanokagu, the place of the mythic accession, the trace of the first capital divided into a grid, and the townscape of merchant houses with their continuous white walls still lie side by side. The memory of the founding, the first step of town planning, and the prosperity of commerce fold upon one another on the same floor of the basin and form the strata of the town of Kashihara.