Hagi-shi

In the 2020 Population Census it is 44,626 — about forty-five thousand. To read this city’s population, one must account for a merger. In 2005 the former Hagi City newly merged with two surrounding towns and four villages to become the present Hagi City. The population of the former Hagi City before the merger was 46,004 in 2000, and after the merger it was 57,990 in 2005. From there it has fallen smoothly — 53,747 in 2010, 49,560 in 2015, 44,626 in 2020. The step in population between 2000 and 2005 in this article mirrors the widening of the city area by this merger.

Looking inside, the figure of a seaside castle town shrinking greatly appears. The share aged 65 and over rose from 25.0% in 2000 to 43.9% in 2020, well above four in ten. The household-with-children share was low at 13.9% in 2020, and the Childcare Waitlist was zero in both 2024 and 2025. The Fiscal Capacity Index was 0.32 in fiscal 2023 — covering only about three-tenths of expenditure with its own tax revenue, with a large dependence on the allocation tax. The figure of a castle town that raised the patriots who opened the Meiji era, deepening aging while losing population on the post-merger city area, appears in the numbers. Why it takes this shape cannot be read without going back over the history of a seaside castle town and the Meiji Restoration.

This town’s history can be traced from three layers: the starting point of a castle town pushed to the seaside, the patriots opening the Meiji era who were raised in that castle town, and the falling off the main current of the times after the domain’s center moved. The old layer is the castle town. After the Battle of Sekigahara, a daimyo who had governed broad lands in western Japan, having sided with the losers, had his domain greatly cut and was pushed into this seaside land. The daimyo built a castle on a mountain on a delta that opens toward the sea, and opened a castle town at its foot. For more than two hundred and sixty years thereafter, this castle town remained the center of the domain’s politics and administration, and the residential land of high-ranking samurai and the towns where townspeople lived still keep the divisions of those days.

And at the close of the shogunate, this castle town raised the talent that moved the age. The small academy of the castle town received those who learned regardless of status or class, and from it were sent out many people who were active in the turmoil of the late shogunate and bore important roles in the new nation-building of the Meiji era. The kilns where pottery was fired in this land, and the traces of attempts at modern iron-making and shipbuilding, were later counted among the world’s heritage. But once the Meiji era came, the domain’s center moved to another land of better transport, and this seaside castle town fell off the main current of the times. Ironically, falling off the main current also resulted in the old townscape of the castle town remaining largely unbroken. A castle town pushed to the seaside raised the patriots opening the Meiji era and thereafter fell off the main current and stopped its time — Hagi’s present extends from this history of castle town and Restoration, held by a delta facing the Sea of Japan.

What characterizes Hagi is that, while bearing the history of a castle town that raised the patriots who opened the Meiji era, it greatly loses the population of the city area it widened by merger. From 57,990 in the post-merger 2005 to 44,626 in 2020, more than thirteen thousand fell over fifteen years. Ever since the domain’s center moved to another land in the Meiji era, this seaside castle town has remained a land off the main current of the times. Away from rail and trunk roads, this delta facing the Sea of Japan is far from large cities and hard to draw new places of work into broadly. One can read that the young generation moved to urban areas seeking work, and the population fell greatly. That the share aged 65 and over passed well above four in ten at 43.9% in 2020, and that the household-with-children share is low at 13.9%, is the expression of that population composition.

Meanwhile the Childcare Waitlist was zero in both 2024 and 2025. The Fiscal Capacity Index of 0.32 is a level covering only about three-tenths of expenditure with its own tax revenue, with a large dependence on the allocation tax. It mirrors that, as a seaside castle town and as a city area holding broad mountains and seaside, its own tax sources are limited. The castle town that raised the patriots opening the Meiji era now deepens aging while losing population on the post-merger city area. The population fell greatly after the merger, aging passed well above four in ten, and the fiscal strength is weak — on this Sea-of-Japan-coast town, those movements come out in the numbers in a bundle. Pull out only a single indicator, and the town’s image does not form.

What Hagi keeps to this day is born of an ironic course. The castle town built by a daimyo pushed to the seaside after Sekigahara remained the center of the domain for more than two hundred and sixty years, and the residential land of samurai and the towns of townspeople keep the divisions of those days. The academy of the late-shogunate castle town raised many patriots who opened the Meiji era, and its historic sites are counted among the world’s heritage together with the traces of attempts at modern iron-making and shipbuilding. And that, in the Meiji era, the domain’s center moved to a land of better transport and it fell off the main current, left the old townscape largely unbroken.

Hagi is a town that raised the patriots who opened the Meiji era and, falling off the main current, stopped its time. From a castle town pushed to the seaside, to an academy that raised the patriots opening the Meiji era, and then to a town that fell off the main current and kept its old townscape — the geography of "opening upon a delta facing the Sea of Japan" called the castle town, and afterward, by falling off the main current, made it stop its time and shaped the town’s outline. Falling off development, and keeping the figure of an age, become in this town the front and back of one and the same history.