Hofu-shi

In the 2020 Population Census it is 113,979 — above 110,000. This town’s population has fallen gently toward 2020 from 117,724 in 2000, not by a step from a large merger. The fall stays at about four thousand over twenty years, in the category of a gentle shrinking for a mid-sized regional city.

Looking inside, the fall of children and aging are advancing. Those under 15 grew fewer by about 2,900 over twenty years, from 17,545 in 2000 to 14,658 in 2020. The aging rate rose from 20.1% in 2000 to 30.7% in 2020, passing three in ten. The household-with-children share is 20.4%, the Childcare Waitlist has been zero in recent years, and the Fiscal Capacity Index was 0.75 in fiscal 2023, on the high side among regional cities. The figure of a town on a Seto Inland Sea plain, growing old while shrinking gently, appears in the numbers. Why it takes this shape cannot be read without going back over the history of a provincial capital and salt fields.

Hofu’s history begins where, in ancient times, this land was the center of a province. In the age of the ritsuryo codes, the provincial seat of government of Suo Province was placed on this plain. The provincial seat was the office that governed the province, and the ruins of the provincial temple and the provincial seat still remain. The very place-name "Hofu" bears the meaning of the "fu" of Suo — that is, the center of Suo Province. That it was opened as a "fu" is this town’s first foundation.

Upon the center of that "fu," another core overlaps. It is Hofu Tenmangu (Matsuzaki Tenjin), enshrining Sugawara no Michizane, known as the god of learning. The temple-gate town of this Tenmangu prospered around the node of the Sanyo Road and the Hagi Highway linking the castle town and the port. The Hagi Highway, opened in 1604 to link the Hagi castle town and Mitajiri, was a road of the alternate-attendance system, and its southern starting point was Mitajiri in this land. The land of the "fu" was also a node of highway and port.

And in the early modern era, another industry put down roots in this town: salt. On the shallow seaside of Mitajiri, after 1699, in-beach-style salt fields were built one after another. This group of salt fields, called the "Mitajiri Six Beaches," became a great salt-producing land producing half the salt of the two Boncho provinces, and played a large role in the history of salt in Japan. Opened as the Suo provincial capital, becoming the temple-gate town of a Tenmangu, the starting point of the Hagi Highway and a land of salt fields — Hofu’s present stands in the extension of this history of a "fu" and salt fields.

What characterizes Hofu is that, while the total population falls gently without a merger, children fall faster than that. Over twenty years the total population fell by a little over three percent, whereas those under 15 fell by about sixteen percent. As a town on a Seto Inland Sea plain, while holding a degree of employment in manufacturing and the like, the thinning of births and the outflow of the young generation thin the town from the children’s layer first.

In the living-infrastructure numbers, this town’s stability also appears. Elementary schools have stayed at seventeen, unchanged for long, from 2000 to 2023. That the school network has been kept even as children fall gently can be read as an expression of the city not having undergone a merger that greatly widened the city area, and of its built-up area being compact. The Childcare Waitlist has moved at zero in recent years. The town opened as the Suo provincial capital and the land of salt fields now keeps a compact built-up area on a Seto Inland Sea plain while gently thinning the children’s layer. The total population falls gently, children fall faster, and aging passes three in ten — on this town opened as a "fu," those movements come out in the numbers, overlapping. Pull out only a single indicator, and the image is not fixed.

Hofu’s functions are condensed into one character of its place-name. The very place-name of today bears the history of being a land of the "fu," where the provincial seat of Suo Province was placed in ancient times. Its character of being the temple-gate town of Hofu Tenmangu and the southern starting point of the Hagi Highway keeps the face of a node of faith and highway. The Mitajiri salt fields show the face of an industrial land with the shallow seaside of the Seto Inland Sea at its back.

Hofu is a Seto Inland Sea town that was a "fu" and a land of salt. From the land of the Suo provincial capital, to the temple-gate town of a Tenmangu and the starting point of the Hagi Highway, to the salt-producing land of the Mitajiri salt fields, and then to a Seto Inland Sea city shrinking gently — the history of "being opened as the fu of a province, where highway, port and salt fields joined together" called the temple-gate town and the salt-producing land and shaped the town’s outline. Still bearing in its place-name the single character "fu," which means the center of a province, this town is still seated upon the Seto Inland Sea plain.