Ube-shi

In the 2020 Population Census the population is 162,570 — above 160,000. In the five years from 169,429 in 2015, it fell by nearly seven thousand. It is a city that has clearly entered a phase of decline.

What to note here is that the number of children thins along with the total, while aging has reached one-third. Those under 15 fell by more than 1,800 in five years, from 20,513 (2015) to 18,676 (2020). In the same period the share aged 65 and over rose from 30.3% to 33.2%, entering a stage where one in three is elderly. The Official Land Price for residential land is about 30,000 yen per m² (30,000 yen/m², 2026). The Fiscal Capacity Index is 0.70 (2023), not reaching 1.0 — a structure that supplements part of standard expenditure with the local allocation tax. This is the standard figure of a regional city: even one with a history of industry does not cover all of its expenditure with its own tax revenue alone. The Childcare Waitlist is 0 (2025), and the household-with-children share is 18.0% (2020). Why it takes this shape cannot be read without going back over the history of turning from coal to chemicals.

Ube’s skeleton is a history in which a single resource, passing on its role, has remade the town. In this land, once a village facing the Seto Inland Sea, coal was found in the early Edo era. At first that coal was used as a fuel for boiling salt in the Seto Inland Sea salt fields. Entering the Meiji era, coal mines were opened here and there, and the coal industry became this land’s foundation. In economic geography, it is the starting point of an industrial agglomeration cored on an underground resource.

What decided its fate is that local people themselves invested to raise a coal mine. Watanabe Sukesaku and others raised the Okinoyama Coal Mine with investment from local residents, and developed a form in which the coal they dug was not merely sold but used as a fuel for cement-making and as a raw material for chemical fertilizer such as ammonium sulfate. From coal as a starting point, machinery, cement and chemicals branched out. In 1921, the rapidly developed village put the municipal system into force as the second city in Yamaguchi Prefecture. And in 1942, several enterprises, beginning with the Okinoyama Coal Mine group, merged to form Ube Kosan (now UBE). The coal town shifted its footing to a town of chemicals and cement.

But the agglomeration of heavy industry bred a pollution called "falling ash" — soot falling from the factories. To this Ube responded with an effort called the "Ube method," in which government, enterprises and citizens cooperated, and with a greening movement that covered the town over again with flowers and green. Turning from coal to chemicals, and covering over again with green the pollution that was its price — Ube’s present continues from this history of turning and repair around a single underground resource.

What characterizes Ube is that, while the total population falls by seven thousand, the aging rate reaches one-third. Those 65 and over are 33.2% (2020) — the stage where one in three is elderly shows a structure, the older a town’s industry, in which the generation that built the town has itself aged.

The number of children thins along with the total. Those under 15 fell by more than 1,800 in five years. Meanwhile the Childcare Waitlist is held at 0 (2025). But this 0, too, should be read not as the result of supply catching up to demand in a town where children increase, but as a 0 amid the absolute number of children thinning. Lay the household-with-children share of 18.0% (2020) over the fall of those under 15, and it appears as a 0 in a phase where childcare demand itself gently shrinks. Children fall, aging reaches one-third, and yet the waitlist settles at 0 — even with the same waitlist of 0, the meaning changes by what is happening behind it. Take out only a single number, and the town’s outline is misread.

Ube’s functions branch from a single root, coal. The industrial agglomeration of chemicals, cement and machinery is still cored, as industry, by enterprises that continue from Ube Kosan. Tokiwa Park and the Coal Memorial Museum keep the memory of the former coal-mine town. Yamaguchi Ube Airport adjoins the town as the gateway of the sky on the Seto Inland Sea side.

Over a single underground resource, Ube has carried its role from mining to processing, and then to the repair of pollution. Coal was found, changed its figure from a fuel for salt-making to a raw material for chemicals and cement, and the falling-ash that was heavy industry’s price was covered over again by a greening movement. The "single resource, coal" has kept bearing a different function age by age. The coal mine, the chemical factory, and the green park all branch, in origin, from the same single root, coal. In not ending with selling the resource but holding processing and repair within one town lies this town’s thickness.