Yanagawa-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 64,000 (64,475 in 2020). This city’s population has a step from a merger. In 2005 the former Yanagawa City merged on equal terms with Mitsuhashi Town and Yamato Town to become the present city area. Before the merger it was the former Yanagawa City’s 41,815 in 2000, but with the two towns combined it became 74,539 in 2005, and from there, to 71,375 in 2010, 67,777 in 2015 and 64,475 in 2020, it has declined gently after the merger.

Looking inside, the figure of a Chikugo city facing the Ariake Sea appears. The share aged 65 and over rose from 21.6% in 2000 to 33.5% in 2020, passing three in ten. The household-with-children share is 20.9% (2020), and the Childcare Waitlist was zero in both 2024 and 2025. The Fiscal Capacity Index was 0.46 in fiscal 2023 — its own tax revenue does not reach half of expenditure, and its dependence on the allocation tax is large. The waterside town of moats, losing population and deepening its aging after the merger, keeps a zero waitlist. The origin of this figure does not come into view without going back over the history of the castle town of the Tachibana clan and the moats.

Yanagawa’s skeleton is set by the geography of low, flat ground facing the Ariake Sea, and by the history of a castle town opened by making use of that land’s water. The old layer is a castle town. In the Warring States period, Kamachi Akimori, who governed this land, developed the waterways winding through the low, flat ground — the moats — as a defensive wall of water to guard the castle. In time, after Sekigahara, Tanaka Yoshimasa entered this land, greatly ordered the moats, raised a keep, advanced the flood control of the Yabe River, and set the skeleton of the castle town. And the one who took deep root in this land was the Tachibana clan. Tachibana Muneshige became the lord of this land after Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s pacification of Kyushu; he once lost his domain after the Battle of Sekigahara, but later returned as lord of the Yanagawa domain, and the Tachibana clan governed this land until the Meiji era. The water of the low, flat ground became a defensive wall to guard the castle and set the castle town — the condition of geography was translated into the skeleton of the town.

These moats became the town’s individuality in the modern era. The total length of the moats winding through the city is said to reach about 930 kilometers. At one time a plan to fill in these moats arose, but the path of preservation and use was chosen, and now the river cruise that winds through them by boat has become a landscape representative of this town. This town of water raised a single poet too. The poet Kitahara Hakushu was born in this Yanagawa and sang the landscape of the waterside town in his poetry. In addition, this town is also known for the local dish of steamed eel over rice (seiro-mushi), and the reclaimed land of the Ariake Sea produces rice and nori. Water guarded the castle town and raised a poet. The history of water, held by the geography of low, flat ground facing the Ariake Sea, has formed the present shape of the town.

What characterizes Yanagawa is that, while it holds the history of a waterside town of moats and the castle town of the Tachibana clan, it has been losing population and deepening its aging after the merger. From 74,539 in 2005, with the two towns combined, to 64,475 in 2020, some ten thousand were lost over fifteen years. In a land of the southern part of Fukuoka Prefecture, at a distance from Fukuoka and Kurume, amid a flow of young generations moving to cities, one can read that the loss of population and the deepening of aging are proceeding.

On the other hand, the household-with-children share holds at 20.9% (2020), and the Childcare Waitlist has held at zero. One can read this as an expression of the agriculture and fisheries of the reclaimed land of the Ariake Sea, and tourism with the waterside town as its backdrop, keeping young households tied in place to a certain degree. The Fiscal Capacity Index of 0.46 is a level whose own tax revenue does not even reach half of expenditure, and its dependence on the allocation tax is large. It reflects that, against the expenditure of supporting a low-lying, broad city area, the tax source of a town based on agriculture and tourism has its limits. The population declines, the aging passes three in ten, and the fiscal stamina is weak. These are things proceeding at once upon the history of a waterside town, and the figure of an Ariake-Sea town does not come together by looking at any single indicator.

In Yanagawa, several functions of differing histories are folded together. One is the old layer of a castle town where the moats were opened as the castle’s defensive wall and the Tachibana clan governed until the Meiji era — water guarded the castle town. Another is the waterside town of moats reaching a total length of about 930 kilometers, retaining the character of a river cruise that winds through them by boat. The memory of being the land that gave birth to the poet Kitahara Hakushu, and the local dish of steamed eel over rice, give this land the peculiar structure of a town where water raised people and culture.

Low, flat ground facing the Ariake Sea — this condition called the waterways that guard the castle, and that water in time raised the castle town and culture. The water flowing through the lowland was changed, not into the burden of flood control, but into the castle’s defensive wall, into the landscape of tourism, into the subject of poetry. The 930 kilometers of moats are the crystallization of that accumulation. One could call it a town that has kept making its peace with water.