Marugame-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 109,000 (109,513 in 2020). In the five years from 110,010 in 2015, it fell by only some five hundred — nearly level. It is the second city of Kagawa Prefecture after Takamatsu City, and the movement of its population is comparatively gentle.

The number of children, too, stays within a gentle decline. Those under 15 fell by some four hundred, from 15,054 (2015) to 14,667 (2020). In the same period the share aged 65 and over rose from 26.9% to 28.7%. Aging advances, but compared with Nobeoka and Beppu seen so far, the aging rate is on the lower side. The household-with-children share is 22.5% (2020) — the thickest of the three cities. The Official Land Price for residential land is about 38,000 yen per m². The Fiscal Capacity Index is 0.60 (2023); the part not reaching 1.0 is supplemented by the local allocation tax, but it is the highest of the three cities. The Childcare Waitlist is 0 (2025). Why such numbers take this shape cannot be read without going back over the history of castle town, pilgrimage port and local industry.

Marugame’s skeleton is a land where three layers — castle, port and local industry — piled up across the ages. In 1597 Ikoma Chikamasa and Kazumasa built a castle at Kameyama. From two years later, people were moved from Utazu to shape the castle town. In the Edo era, the Kyogoku entered in 1658 and governed the whole of western Sanuki for about two hundred and ten years over seven generations, until the Meiji Restoration. The districts as a castle town are this town’s first foundation.

The second foundation is the port. Marugame prospered as the port town for the gateway to Kotohiragu Shrine, known as Konpira-san. When the Konpira pilgrimage flourished from the mid-Edo era, pilgrims who landed at Marugame Port went toward Kotohira along the Marugame Highway. The road from the Tasuke lantern of Marugame Port to the high lantern of Kotohira still keeps its old aspect. In economic geography, it is the process by which the draw of faith bore the prosperity of a port town and a highway.

The third foundation is the local industry raised from the souvenir for those pilgrims. The Marugame round fan is said to have begun in the early Edo era as a souvenir for the Konpira pilgrimage, and in time grew into a local industry holding about nine-tenths of the national share (about 83 million fans a year). The demand of the pilgrims bore a product in the port town, and that product took root as a regional industry. It took city status in 1899 and, holding the three layers of castle town, pilgrimage port and local industry, continues as the second city of Kagawa. The present comparatively gentle movement of population is not unrelated to this multilayered history, which does not lean too heavily on a single industry or company.

What characterizes Marugame is that the total population fell by only some five hundred in five years, the number of children fell only gently by some four hundred, and the household-with-children share, at 22.5%, is the thickest of the three cities. That appears in the living-infrastructure numbers in a comparatively stable form, unlike the sharp contraction of Nobeoka or Beppu. A town with the multilayered history of castle town, pilgrimage port and local industry is hard for the rise and fall of a single industry to drag along whole, and the movement of its population tends to be gentle too.

The Childcare Waitlist is 0. In Marugame — where the household-with-children share is the thickest of the three cities and the fall of children is gentle — the zero can be read, rather than a zero at the end of a sharp fall in children, as close to a zero in which supply is roughly balanced against a continuing certain childcare demand. Even the same "zero waitlist" differs, behind it, in the movement of population from the zero of the shrinking towns of Nobeoka or Beppu. The gentle fall of children, the lowest aging rate of the three cities, the thick childcare households, and a zero waitlist — these are the outcome by which the comparatively stable population composition of a town whose three layers, castle town, pilgrimage port and round fan, did not lean on a single industry appears just as it is. Even the same zero waitlist holds wholly different movements of population behind it — a zero at the end of a sharp fall of children, and a zero in which supply is balanced amid continuing childcare demand.

In Marugame, the siting of a key point of the Seto Inland has piled up three layers — castle, port and local industry — across the ages. One is Marugame Castle, built at Kameyama, telling the origin of a castle town as a castle with high stone walls. Another is Marugame Port, the landing port of the Konpira pilgrimage, and the Marugame Highway leading from it to Kotohira — the functions of a port town and a highway born of the draw of pilgrimage. Further, the Marugame round fan, holding about nine-tenths of the national share, still makes up the town’s proper character as a local industry raised from a souvenir for pilgrims.

Marugame, as the second city of Kagawa facing the Seto Inland Sea, is one of the prefecture’s bases alongside Takamatsu City. From castle town, to pilgrimage port, and then to a town of local industry — the siting of "facing the Seto Inland, on the route of the Konpira pilgrimage" took on a different function age by age. The castle, the port, and the round fan all rest, in origin, upon the same siting, a key point of the Seto Inland. That siting called in the castle, carried the pilgrims of the Konpira pilgrimage, and raised the round fan, once a souvenir, into a local industry holding nine-tenths of the nation — Marugame’s stability is also the reverse side of a single siting having held several layers within it.