Matsue-shi

In the most recent Population Census the population is about 204,000 (203,616 in 2020). Over the five years from 206,230 in 2015 it lost some twenty-six hundred. As a San’in prefectural capital holding a scale of 200,000, it has entered a phase of gentle decline.

Those under 15 fell from 26,384 (2015) to 25,931 (2020), some four hundred fewer in five years. Over the same period the share aged 65 and over rose from 27.3% to 29.2%, nearing three in ten. Behind a gently falling total, the center of gravity is shifting toward the older side. The residential land price is around 52,000 yen per m² (51,600 yen per m²), at a level befitting a San’in prefectural capital. The Fiscal Capacity Index is 0.56; below 1.0 — covering about half of standard expenditure with its own tax revenue and making up the rest with the local allocation tax — it is a shape common to regional cities of small population scale. The childcare waitlist was 0 children as of 2025. Households with children make up 20.7% (2020). Why these numbers take this shape cannot be read without tracing the history of a water-girdled castle town.

Matsue’s skeleton stands on a plan that set castle and town at once beside the river that links two lakes. The Horio house, which gained Izumo and Oki — 240,000 koku — for its service at the Battle of Sekigahara, at first entered Gassantoda Castle, a mountain castle from the medieval era. But that site was inconvenient for transport and held no prospect for a castle town’s growth. So they set their sights on the hill of Mount Kameda, on the north side of the Ohashi River that links Lake Shinji and Lake Nakaumi.

Over the five years from 1607 to 1611, Matsue Castle and its castle town were built. The moat encircling the castle led to Lake Shinji, and the Ohashi River flowing to the south served as the outer moat. It is a textbook case, in the terms of economic geography, of a city set not by natural growth but by the plan of its ruler — and a plan that chose a location satisfying both “the convenience of water transport” and “defense” at once. The waterways and street blocks were drawn by human hands at this time.

What is worth seeing in considering this town’s numbers is the fact that Matsue did not suffer a large-scale air raid in the Second World War. So the street blocks since the castle-town era survive without destruction, and the keep of Matsue Castle, built in the Keicho era, still stands today as a National Treasure. In the Meiji era Lafcadio Hearn lived in this town and left a record of the water-girdled castle-town landscape. A castle town set for the convenience of water transport, having escaped the fires of war, carries its skeleton straight into the present day — this is this town’s origin.

What characterizes Matsue-shi is that, while the total population falls by twenty-six hundred, the number of children also thins by some four hundred. The fact that the absolute number of children is falling is an essential premise when reading the childcare numbers.

The childcare waitlist was 0 children as of 2025. But it is too quick to read this “0” only as a sign that the childcare supply is so thick that no one waits. In a regional city where the absolute number of children keeps thinning, the waitlist has a side that nears zero “as a consequence of the demand itself shrinking.” Matsue, too, is in a phase where those under 15 keep falling, and this “0” reads as settling around the point where supply and demand have roughly balanced. Households with children make up 20.7%, a standard level for a prefectural capital of 200,000. Children gently thin, the share of older residents nears three in ten, and yet the waitlist settles at zero — in a regional prefectural capital where these several flows run at once, ease of living cannot be judged by a single number. This figure, too, will be misread unless read together with its background.

Matsue holds several roles centered on water, layered over one another. One is the very landform — girdled by water, set between the two lakes of Lake Shinji and Lake Nakaumi, with the Ohashi River running between them. The castle town was planned on these waterways from the start, and the moat leads to Lake Shinji. The other is the castle-town street blocks that survived the fires of war into the present day, and the National Treasure keep of Matsue Castle standing at their center, which goes on inscribing this town’s origin onto the map.

As the prefectural capital of Shimane, Matsue is also a San’in hub where the prefecture’s administrative functions gather. A castle town that abandoned the inconvenience of a mountain castle to come down to the waterside flatland kept its Edo-period skeleton by escaping the fires of war, and onto it the functions of a prefectural capital were loaded — the origin of “a castle town planned beside the river that links two lakes” has carried different roles in each era. The castle, the castle-town blocks, and the prefecture’s administrative functions all rest, in the end, on this location suited to water transport and defense. A castle town set by deliberately choosing the condition of water, rather than working against the natural landform — Matsue’s present standing lies on the extension of that choice.