Yamaguchi-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 194,000 (193,966 in 2020). In the five years from 197,422 in 2015, it fell by about 3,500. Even while the prefectural capital, the population has entered a phase of decline. One fact to set down here is that, though Yamaguchi City is the capital of Yamaguchi Prefecture, it is not the city with the largest population in the prefecture. The prefecture’s population leader is Shimonoseki City, and Yamaguchi City stands next to it.

The number of children falls faster than the total. Those under 15 fell by nearly two thousand in five years, from 26,118 (2015) to 24,166 (2020). In the same period the share aged 65 and over rose from 27.0% to 29.0%, nearing three in ten. The household-with-children share is 19.3% (2020). The Official Land Price for residential land is about 43,000 yen per m², at a level considerably lower than cities in the metropolitan sphere. The Fiscal Capacity Index is 0.62, below 1.0, so it has a structure that supplements with the local allocation tax the gap between standard expenditure and its own tax revenue — a form not rare even among the nation’s prefectural capitals. The Childcare Waitlist rose from 2 (2024) to 5 (2025). Why such numbers take this shape cannot be read without going back over the history of a daimyo’s city and the domain office.

Yamaguchi’s skeleton is made of the history of a city the provincial-protector daimyo set in imitation of Kyoto, and a political center that moved there afterward. The first foundation is the Ouchi. Around 1360, in the Northern-and-Southern-Courts period, Ouchi Hiroyo, having pacified Suo Province, moved the Ouchi seat to this land. In the time of Ouchi Yoshioki and Yoshitaka in the Muromachi era it prospered as the foremost daimyo of western Japan, a townscape patterned on Kyoto was built, and Yamaguchi came to be called the "Kyoto of the West." In historical geography, it is an instance of a provincial-protector daimyo’s city, older than a castle town, remaining just so as the town’s skeleton.

The second foundation is the role of a political center. At the close of the shogunate, the Choshu domain moved its domain office from Hagi to Yamaguchi. With the abolition of the domains and creation of the prefectures in the Meiji era, that Choshu (Yamaguchi) domain office shifted, just so, into the Yamaguchi prefectural office. From the establishment of Yamaguchi Prefecture to the present, Yamaguchi has remained the center of prefectural government — yet the prefecture’s population leader is Shimonoseki City, and a structure has continued in which the prefectural capital and the most populous city do not coincide.

Third, the present city area was formed by mergers. In 2005 it merged with one city and four towns, and in 2010 with the former Ato Town, becoming the broad city area of today. Shin-Yamaguchi Station, into which all rail lines in the city, including the Sanyo Shinkansen, run, was once "Ogori Station" in Ogori Town outside Yamaguchi City; it was renamed in 2003 ahead of the merger and became a station within the city by the 2005 merger. The history of a daimyo’s city, the domain office and the prefectural capital, together with city area annexed afterward, forms the present Yamaguchi City.

What characterizes Yamaguchi is that, while the total population falls by 3,500, the number of children falls by nearly two thousand. The fall of children is faster than the fall of the total. That appears in the living-infrastructure numbers as a pressure opposite in direction to Narashino or Chofu, which increase population. In a town where the absolute number of children thins, the demand for schools and childcare also turns, over the medium-to-long term, toward the shrinking side.

Yet the Childcare Waitlist increased from 2 to 5, by a width of a few people. That the waitlist increases even though the total of children falls looks contradictory, but it can be read as a gap on the order of a few people, which can arise when households needing childcare bias toward particular districts or age groups, or when demand itself thickens with the rise of dual-earner households. "Children fall" and "childcare demand falls" do not necessarily proceed at the same time. The absolute number of children thins, the elderly share nears three in ten, the total population falls too, and yet the waitlist alone increases a little — such a phase is now occurring in the prefecture’s central city. The numbers are not good or bad; they mirror the town’s structure just as it is.

Several functions not seen in other towns overlap in Yamaguchi City. The role of being the center of prefectural government, where the Yamaguchi prefectural office is placed, stacks the prefecture’s administrative function upon the history of the Ouchi’s city and the Choshu domain’s office. In the historical townscape as the "Kyoto of the West," built by the Ouchi in imitation of Kyoto in the Muromachi era, old shrines, temples and historic sites remain. Yuda Hot Spring, often visited even by the patriots of the late shogunate, is also within the city as a hot-spring resort of old.

In transport, all rail lines in the city, including the Sanyo Shinkansen, run into Shin-Yamaguchi Station, and the city is advancing the development of the area around this station as a base for industrial exchange. Shin-Yamaguchi Station was originally a station in Ogori Town outside the city, taken into the city by merger. From the provincial-protector daimyo’s city, to the domain office, to the prefectural capital, and then to the city area widened by merger — the condition "a political center placed near the prefecture’s center" has drawn the Ouchi’s townscape, the prefectural office, the hot spring, and the Shinkansen station. Being the center of prefectural government and being the prefecture’s population leader do not coincide in this town. That very discrepancy becomes the key to reading the town of Yamaguchi.