Tokushima-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 252,000 (252,391 in 2020). In the five years from 258,554 in 2015, it fell by some six thousand. While keeping a scale of 250,000 as the prefectural capital of eastern Shikoku, it has entered a phase of decline.

What to note here is the way the number of children falls. Those under 15 fell by nearly 3,500 in five years, from 29,732 (2015) to 26,272 (2020). Against the width of the total fall (some six thousand), the fall of children is large. In the same period the share aged 65 and over rose from 26.8% to 28.1%. It is a form in which children thin relatively faster and the center of gravity shifts to the elderly side. The Official Land Price for residential land is about 75,000 yen per m² (74,600 yen/m²) — the highest of the three cities set side by side here. The Fiscal Capacity Index is 0.77, below 1.0, with a structure that supplements a certain share of standard expenditure with the local allocation tax. The Childcare Waitlist is 0 as of 2025. The household-with-children share is 15.9% (2020) — the lowest of the three. Why such numbers take this shape cannot be read without going back over the history of a castle town set on a river delta.

Tokushima’s skeleton is the very history of drawing in a town by human hand upon the silt the river had carried down. In 1585 Toyotomi Hideyoshi, having pacified Shikoku, gave Awa to Hachisuka Iemasa. The land where the Hachisuka set a castle was a place called "Inotsu" on the delta where the many rivers, great and small, of the Yoshino-gawa mouth ran wild; upon entering the castle, he changed this place-name to "Tokushima."

What to note in this town is that the town did not gather of itself but was deliberately drawn in by the ruler. In parallel with building the castle, the Hachisuka built a castle town and issued a notice throughout Awa Province that those who came to Tokushima to do business would be given residential land. He further gathered townspeople actively to push the town-building forward — inviting, among others, Uoya Dotsu, a nephew of Sen no Rikyu, from Sakai. In economic geography, it is an instance of a city set by planned invitation. In time this castle town became the gathering-and-distributing point for special products such as Awa indigo, and prospered on water transport making use of its river-mouth siting. By 1894 Tokushima had grown into a city with the eleventh-largest population in the nation. On a terrain by no means blessed — a river delta — it drew people in by laying out residential plots, and raised them with indigo and water transport into one of the nation’s leading cities; this is this town’s origin. And the Bon dance that took root in the castle town would later become the event known as the Awa Odori.

What characterizes Tokushima is that, while the total population falls by some six thousand, the number of children falls by nearly 3,500. Against the fall of the total, the width of the fall of children is relatively large. This is a form often seen in the population dynamics of regional cities, in which, while the number of the elderly is still held, the young generation and children thin first.

The Childcare Waitlist is 0 as of 2025. But this "0," as in Matsue, cannot be read apart from the fact that the absolute number of children is thinning fast. Behind the waitlist nearing zero lie both the side of childcare supply catching up to demand and the side of demand itself — that is, the number of children — shrinking. One can read that Tokushima, for the larger width of its fall in children, is relatively more strongly under the latter influence. The household-with-children share of 15.9%, the lowest of the three cities, also mirrors that childcare-age households are relatively thin in this town. Children thin fast, aging advances, and yet the waitlist settles at zero — these three are the front and back of the same dynamic, in which a castle town drawn onto a river delta has, past its prosperity in indigo and water transport, thinned its childcare-age households. Take out only the figure of a zero waitlist and it looks ample, but behind it runs the household-with-children share of 15.9%, the lowest of the three cities.

Tokushima’s functions did not gather of themselves but were drawn by human hand onto a river delta. Upon the very terrain of the river-mouth delta of the Yoshino-gawa, the castle town was planned from the start. The history of prospering on the gathering-and-distributing of special products such as Awa indigo, and on water transport, was supported in its prosperity by the river-mouth siting. And the Bon dance that took root in the castle town is now the event of the summer Awa Odori, gathering people from across the nation.

As the prefectural capital of Tokushima, the town is also a base where the administrative functions of eastern Shikoku gather. A castle town set by laying out residential plots on a river delta grew, on indigo and water transport, into one of the nation’s leading cities, and the functions of the prefectural capital were loaded onto it — the origin of "a castle town planned on the delta at the Yoshino-gawa mouth" took on a different role age by age. The castle, the indigo distribution point, and the prefecture’s administrative function all rest, in origin, upon the single condition of river-mouth water transport. It did not choose a blessed terrain; it turned the disadvantageous condition of a river-made delta into a city, even issuing a notice that laid out residential plots — Tokushima’s origin lies rather in that human hand.