Kasuga-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 111,000 (111,023 in 2020). Its course is a gentle increase. From 105,219 in 2000, to 108,402 in 2005, to 106,780 in 2010, to 110,743 in 2015, and to 111,023 in 2020, some six thousand were added over twenty years.

Looking inside, the figure of a residential city adjoining a great city to the south appears. The share aged 65 and over rose from 10.5% in 2000 to 22.0% in 2020, but while many regional cities approach four in ten, it does not reach a quarter and keeps its youth. The household-with-children share is a high 25.5% (2020), and the Childcare Waitlist was zero in both 2024 and 2025. The Fiscal Capacity Index was 0.73 in fiscal 2023, a level able to cover a little over seven-tenths of expenditure with its own tax revenue, above the middle. This village, where a Yayoi royal tomb was dug out, keeps its youth while increasing its population. Its figure cannot be unraveled apart from the old layer of being the center of a small state that flourished around here two thousand years ago, and the history of bearing a shrine’s name as the city’s name.

This town’s skeleton is set by the history of being the center of an old state where jar-coffins held to be royal tombs came out in the Yayoi period, and by its character of bearing a shrine’s name. The starting layer is the center of a Yayoi state. From the ground of this town were dug out, of the Yayoi period, great jar-coffins held to be royal tombs, and molds for casting bronze vessels. The center of the small state recorded in an old continental history book as flourishing in this region is said to have lain around this town. A land that was the center of a Yayoi state, holding royal tombs and a workshop casting bronze vessels, is the oldest layer of this town.

Upon this center of a Yayoi state a shrine’s name and a residential district were laid. The name of this town is handed down as deriving from the name of a single shrine long present in this land. This town, long a land where fields spread, from the modern era on remade itself into a residential district as the southern edge of the great city adjoining it just to the north. That it was near a great city and that level land spread out became the ground for widening this town as a residential district. The path to becoming a city reflects this town. In the late 1960s this land turned from a town into a city, and since then, as a residential city south of a great city, it has come to hold one of the highest population densities in the prefecture. A Yayoi royal tomb, the center of an old state, the name of a shrine, and a residential district south of a great city — this town’s form stands upon the history of the center of a Yayoi state and the name of a shrine, held by the Naka River basin adjoining Fukuoka to the south.

What characterizes Kasuga is that, while it holds the history of being the center of a Yayoi state, it increases its population and keeps its youth. From 105,219 in 2000 to 111,023 in 2020, some six thousand were added over twenty years. At the position of the southern edge of the great city adjoining just to the north, housing spread across the level land, and households raising children stayed in this town — this can be read as the support of its population increase. That the share aged 65 and over, at 22.0% in 2020, does not reach a quarter, and that the household-with-children share is a high 25.5%, are expressions of that youthful population composition.

On the other hand, the Childcare Waitlist was zero in both 2024 and 2025. The Fiscal Capacity Index of 0.73 is a level able to cover a little over seven-tenths of expenditure with its own tax revenue, above the middle. One can read that the incomes of the many households dwelling south of the great city hold the tax source above the middle. The Yayoi village where a royal tomb came out still keeps its youth while increasing its population. The increasing population, the aging that does not reach a quarter, and the fiscal stamina above the middle — these are the ripples born of a single position: the southern edge of the great city adjoining just to the north. The advantage of position casts a shadow in the same direction over the population, the age composition, and the tax source alike.

Kasuga has two faces, two thousand years apart, overlapping upon the same land. One is the history of being the center of a small state recorded in an old continental book, where jar-coffins held to be royal tombs and molds for bronze vessels came out in the Yayoi period. Another is its face as a residential city, bearing an old shrine’s name as the city’s name and, as the southern edge of the great city adjoining just to the north, holding one of the highest population densities in the prefecture. The landform of the level Naka River basin adjoining Fukuoka to the south has given the same foundation to the center of a Yayoi state and to the modern residential district alike.

Kasuga is a town where the center of a Yayoi state changed into a residential district south of a great city. What is unexpected is the order. Many residential cities open from empty fields, but in this town a land that was the hub of government and ritual was, after a two-thousand-year sleep, awakened as a place where young households live. Holding a royal tomb underground, above ground households raising children go on increasing — this coexistence of the old and the young makes Kasuga’s numbers distinctive.