Tottori-shi

In the most recent Population Census the population is about 188,000 (188,465 in 2020). Over the five years from 193,717 in 2015 it lost some five thousand two hundred. While being a prefectural capital that represents the San’in region, it has entered a phase of slight decline, like many regional cities across the country.

What is worth seeing here is that the number of children is thinning faster than the total. Those under 15 fell from 25,742 (2015) to 23,684 (2020), some two thousand fewer in five years. Over the same period the share aged 65 and over rose from 26.3% to 29.2%. On the other hand, households with children make up 21.4% (2020), holding a thickness among regional cities of the same scale. The residential land price is around 47,000 yen per m² (47,100 yen in 2026). The Fiscal Capacity Index is 0.50 (2023); its own tax revenue covers only about half of standard expenditure, with the rest made up by the local allocation tax. It is a structure common to San’in prefectural capitals far from the major metropolitan areas — not a weakness particular to Tottori, but a figure set by location and population scale. The childcare waitlist is 0 children (2025). Why these numbers take this shape cannot be read without tracing the origins of a castle town and a great fire.

Tottori’s skeleton is a two-stage structure, in which the blocks laid out as a castle town were burned once and drawn anew. In the mid-16th century, in the late Warring States period, Tottori Castle was built on Mount Kyusho. In 1581 it was put to a siege by starvation under Hashiba Hideyoshi; with supplies cut off, deaths from starvation followed one after another within the castle — a castle that holds the record of a harsh siege. Entering the Edo period, the Ikeda house, descended from Ikeda Terumasa who built Himeji Castle, governed this land and laid out the blocks as the castle town of Inaba and Hoki, 320,000 koku. Craftsmen who had worked on the keep of Himeji Castle were engaged in the work, and Tottori Castle is also called “the younger brother castle of Himeji.” The blocks of the castle town are this town’s first foundation.

The second foundation is the Great Tottori Fire of 1952. Under a strong south wind from a foehn, fire spread in an instant; about two-thirds of the old town center burned, and more than five thousand houses were completely destroyed. It was among the largest fires in postwar Japan. Tottori rebuilt this burned ground through urban planning that included a fireproof building belt, ahead of the rest of the country. Beginning with the widening of Wakasa-kaido running from the station toward the prefectural office, it redrew the burned blocks and remade them into blocks less prone to spreading fire. The blocks laid out as a castle town burned in a great fire and were reborn through modern urban planning with fire prevention woven in — Tottori’s urban area stands on two origins, castle and fire.

What characterizes Tottori-shi is that, even as population gently falls, the share of households with children is held thick among regional cities of the same scale. The population fell by five thousand two hundred in five years, and the absolute number of children by some two thousand. The share of older residents reaches three in ten. Even so, households with children make up 21.4%, higher than the prefectural capitals of Nara and Wakayama seen earlier. Two flows run at once: the total number of children thins, while the thickness of the child-rearing layer within households is held.

And the childcare waitlist is 0 children. Here a re-reading is needed. In a town where the absolute number of children is thinning, a zero waitlist is not, as in Urayasu, “the consequence of supply catching up with ever-rising demand.” It reads as the result of childcare supply settling above demand while children gently thin. Even the same “zero waitlist” means something entirely different depending on whether children behind it are rising or falling. Children thin, aging advances, yet the thickness of the child-rearing layer and the supply-and-demand of childcare are held — the living infrastructure of a San’in prefectural capital far from the major metropolitan areas keeps a balance in its own smaller scale. This figure, too, will be misread unless read together with its background.

Tottori has land of differing roles layered over each other, shaping its blocks. One is the blocks of the castle town centered on the ruins of Tottori Castle on Mount Kyusho, which still carries the prefecture’s administrative center, redrawn through a great fire with fire prevention woven in. Another is the Tottori Sand Dunes facing the Sea of Japan, gathering people from across the country as a scenic site that represents the San’in region. Further, as the gateway to the San’in region, Tottori is the node of transport and administration for the Inaba area.

As the capital of Tottori Prefecture, Tottori gathers administrative functions into itself. From a mountain castle that endured a siege by starvation, to the castle town of the Ikeda house’s 320,000 koku, to a town burned in a great fire and rebuilt with a fireproof belt — the origin of “blocks drawn around a castle” still sets the skeleton of the urban area after loss and recovery. Both the castle ruins and the redrawn blocks rest, in the end, on the same foundation: the foot of Mount Kyusho. The experience of having burned once is inscribed in the present urban area in the form of fire-resistant blocks. Tottori’s urban area stands on a double drawing — the line the castle drew, and the line the great fire redrew.