Matsuyama-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 511,000 (511,192 in 2020). In the five years from 514,865 in 2015, it fell by some 3,700. At a scale of over half a million, this is the most populous prefectural capital in Shikoku, but its growth has already stopped and it has entered a phase of gentle decline.

What to note here is that the number of children is thinning faster than the total. Those under 15 fell by more than three thousand, from 64,925 (2015) to 61,680 (2020). In the same five years the share aged 65 and over rose from 25.0% to 27.3%. The household-with-children share was 18.2% (2020). The Official Land Price for residential land is about 85,000 yen per m², on the higher side for a prefectural capital in Shikoku. The Fiscal Capacity Index is 0.74, below 1.0, with a structure that cannot fully cover standard expenditure with its own tax revenue and supplements the shortfall with the local allocation tax — a form widely common to prefectural capitals outside the major metropolitan areas. The Childcare Waitlist rose from 0 in 2024 to 13 in 2025. Even in a phase where the total number of children falls, if the childcare demand of a particular area or age locally exceeds supply, a waitlist can appear again. Why these numbers take this shape cannot be read without going back over the history of a castle town.

Matsuyama’s skeleton was built up over four hundred years around a single castle. In 1602 Kato Yoshiaki, who had entered Iyo for his service at Sekigahara, finding his former castle cramped, began building a new castle on a hill called Katsuyama. The next year, 1603, Yoshiaki named this place "Matsuyama" and moved there, bringing his retainers and townspeople with him. The city’s name was born in the moment the castle was set. The building of Matsuyama Castle continued for about a quarter-century; after Yoshiaki was transferred to Aizu, Gamo Tadachika completed it.

In 1635 Matsudaira Sadayuki entered with a fief of 150,000 koku, transferred from Kuwana in Ise. Thereafter this Matsudaira house held the fief in succession for fourteen generations, and until the Meiji Restoration Matsuyama went on being the political and economic center of Iyo. It is, in the terms of economic geography, a path dependence cored on a castle town — the structure by which a town once set as a center keeps drawing administrative and commercial functions to itself appears here in typical form.

There is another history in this city, separate from the castle town. Dogo Onsen, welling up in the east of the city, is counted as one of Japan’s three oldest hot springs, alongside Arima and Shirahama, and appears in old documents. Further, in the modern era this land bore Masaoka Shiki, and it also became the place where Shiki and Natsume Soseki sought to remake haiku anew. The castle, the old hot spring and literature — that three histories of differing character overlap in a single city is the foundation of its depth as a city of half a million.

What characterizes Matsuyama is that, while the total population falls gently, the number of children is thinning faster than that. Those under 15 fell by more than three thousand in five years, and the share of the elderly passed a quarter. Its scale as a city of half a million is held, but the center of gravity within is shifting steadily to the elderly side.

Within that, the Childcare Waitlist rose from 0 in 2024 to 13 in 2025. That a waitlist grows even as the absolute number of children falls may at first look contradictory. But this can happen in a context different from the one in which major cities such as Yokohama (14100) and Saitama (11100) have struggled with a surge of childcare demand. Even if children fall across the whole city, if an increase in dual-income households, a rise in the childcare-application rate, or a concentration of demand on a particular district or age locally exceeds supply, a waitlist appears once more. The figure of 13 mirrors, on a dimension separate from the fall in the total number of children, a fine mismatch of supply and demand — which district’s, which age’s, which time slot’s childcare is short. A number does not fix its meaning on its own — even the change from 0 to 13 only shows what is happening once it is laid over the fall of the total.

In Matsuyama, three histories of differing character live together in a single city. One is the castle town cored on Matsuyama Castle, set on Katsuyama, the urban district that went on being the political and economic center of Iyo for four hundred years. Another is Dogo Onsen, welling up in the east of the city, which has gathered people from of old as one of Japan’s three oldest hot springs. Further, there is the face of "a city of haiku and literature," deeply tied to Masaoka Shiki and Natsume Soseki, with places connected to haiku scattered about the town.

Matsuyama is the prefectural capital of Ehime and holds the largest population in Shikoku. From the castle town, from the gate of the old hot spring, from the land of literature — three histories of differing character live together within a single city. The center of administration, the hot spring, the memory of literature — all of them, in origin, have piled up upon the single position of being "the center of Iyo." A castle was set and the town’s name was born, and that centrality drew in, age by age, the old waters of Dogo and the literature of Shiki and Soseki.