Kurashiki-shi

In the 2020 Population Census the population of Kurashiki-shi is 474,592 — about 475,000, down by some 2,500 over the five years from 477,118 in 2015. One can read it as a city that, while holding the 470,000 range, has entered a phase of gentle decline.

What I want to mark here is the pace at which children are falling. Those under 15 fell from 64,463 (2015) to 58,486 (2020) — nearly 6,000 over five years. Against a total population that fell by some 2,500, the loss of children advances at more than twice that pace. Over the same period the share aged 65 and over rose from 25.6% to 26.5%. Behind the plateau in the total, the center of gravity is shifting surely toward the older side. Households with children make up 20.3% (2020). The residential Official Land Price stands at around 44,000 yen per m², a level held down even compared with the urban parts of the same Okayama Prefecture. The Fiscal Capacity Index is 0.83 — its own tax revenue covers much of expenditure, with the remainder filled by the local allocation tax. The Childcare Waitlist fell from 7 (2024) to 3 (2025), holding at a low level. Why it takes this shape cannot be read without tracing the history of the merchant houses of shogunate territory, the cotton of reclaimed land, and the industry of filled-in land.

Kurashiki’s skeleton lies in three lands of differing character bound into one city. The first is Kurashiki as a river town. The banks of the Kurashiki River opened as a collecting point for the rice harvested nearby. In 1642 it became land held directly by the shogunate — tenryo — a magistrate’s office was placed there, and it flourished as a merchant town where rice and goods gathered. The white-walled merchant houses built by the wealthy traders of that time are the prototype of the townscape that remains. In 1969 the city designated it a scenic district, and in 1979 it was selected as an Important Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings. In the terms of historical geography, it is a textbook case of a node of distribution giving rise to a cluster of merchant houses.

The second is Kojima, a land of reclamation. On this land opened by reclaiming the sea, the growing of salt-tolerant cotton flourished, and from it a textile industry arose. By the early Showa era it came to hold a large share of the nation’s school uniforms, and later it became the birthplace of domestic jeans. A land that turned sea into shore grew, by way of the crop of cotton, into a cluster of textiles. The third is Mizushima, a land of filled-in sea. In 1961 the siting of the Mizushima steelworks of Nippon Kokan (now JFE) was decided, and the south of Okayama Prefecture was designated a new industrial city. Along the filled-in shore of the Seto Inland Sea, the Mizushima complex — clustering oil refining, petrochemicals, and steel — took shape. The merchant town of shogunate territory, the textiles of reclaimed land, the heavy industry of filled-in land — three lands of differing origin and era were later bound, through municipal mergers, into one Kurashiki-shi. This town’s numbers stand as a figure averaging three histories of differing character.

What characterizes Kurashiki-shi is that, while the total population fell by some 2,500, the number of children fell by nearly 6,000 — more than twice as much. That the loss of children outruns the loss of the total means that the speed at which the city’s age structure tilts toward the old runs a step ahead of the shrinkage of the whole. It is the front and back of the same single current as the rise of the elderly share to 26.5%.

The Childcare Waitlist fell further, from 7 to 3, at a low level. What I want to note here is the circumstance behind this decline. Behind a falling waitlist there may be a side where the childcare supply has grown, but the demand-side shrinkage — that the absolute number of children fell by nearly 6,000 over five years — is also at work. In a town where children fall fast, a falling waitlist differs in the direction of its meaning from a decline in a town where child-rearing households keep gathering. Children fall, the elderly share passes a quarter, and yet the waitlist is held low — this combination is a structure observed not only in Kurashiki but commonly across many regional cities. Pull out the single figure “a waitlist of 3” and the why of it drops away.

Kurashiki is a city that holds, at once, functions of utterly different character. One is the white-walled merchant townscape of shogunate-territory origin that remains on the banks of the Kurashiki River, drawing people from across the country as an Important Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings. Another is the Mizushima complex on filled-in land, supporting the foundation of this town’s industry as one of the Seto Inland Sea’s leading coastal industrial zones, clustering oil refining, petrochemicals, and steel. And Kojima, the land of reclamation, keeps a manufacturing face as a land of textiles — school uniforms and jeans.

Kurashiki binds within one municipal area three lands utterly different in origin and scenery — a merchant town, textiles, and heavy industry. From a river town that gathered rice to a merchant town of shogunate territory; from a land of cotton reclaimed from the sea to a town of textiles; from a filled-in sea to a base of heavy industry — each land grew a different function according to its own geographic conditions. It is not that one center spread outward, but that several cores of differing character were later bound into one city. To read Kurashiki is nothing other than to unbind that binding and read it.