Karatsu-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 117,000 (117,373 in 2020). This city’s population has a large step from the merger. Karatsu City reached its present wide city area in 2005 by the new merger of the former Karatsu City and seven surrounding towns and villages. The 78,945 of 2000, the former Karatsu City alone before the merger, became the 128,564 of 2005, the eight municipalities combined after the merger, and from there, to the 126,926 of 2010, the 122,785 of 2015 and the 117,373 of 2020, it has fallen gently after the merger.

Looking inside, the figure peculiar to a city of northern Kyushu appears. The share aged 65 and over reached 32.7% in 2020, passing three in ten. The household-with-children share is a high 23.2%, and the Childcare Waitlist was zero in both 2024 and 2025. The Fiscal Capacity Index was 0.43 in fiscal 2023 — its own tax revenue does not reach half of expenditure, and the reliance on the allocation tax is large. The figure shows in the numbers: a port town of castle and ceramics, losing population and deepening its aging after the merger, while keeping the household-with-children share high. Why it takes this form cannot be read without going back to the past of Nagoya Castle and Karatsu ware.

The town of Karatsu has piled up upon the geography of a port on the Genkai Sea, the nearest to the continent. In 1592 (Bunroku 1) Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who had unified the realm, built Nagoya Castle in the land of Karatsu as a base for an expedition to the continent. This castle, occupying a vast site, is held to have been of a scale next to the Osaka Castle of the time; daimyo from the whole country pitched their camps, and more than two hundred thousand people are said to have gathered in this land. Around the castle, the Momoyama culture of tea, Noh and the performing arts came into flower. The geography of a gateway to the continent drew, for a time, the center of the realm to this land.

After that expedition, a castle town was built in this land. The first lord of the Karatsu domain, Terazawa Hirotaka, built Karatsu Castle — said also to have used materials from the dismantled Nagoya Castle — ordered the castle town, and planted black pines along the shore to raise the Niji-no-Matsubara pine grove. As a castle town facing the Genkai Sea, Karatsu began its early-modern course.

And this land’s ceramics were born. At the time of the expedition, potters who had come over from the Korean peninsula opened kilns in various parts of Kyushu. The ceramics fired at Karatsu came to be called Karatsu ware and known as tea ceramics of a plain taste. A craft brought across the sea struck root in this port town as a ceramic tradition. Beginning as a base for an expedition to the continent, then a castle town built, then ceramics fired with a craft brought across the sea — the Genkai Sea, a sea near the continent, drew in these pasts one after another.

What characterizes Karatsu is that, while it holds a past known throughout the country in Nagoya Castle and Karatsu ware, it is losing population and deepening its aging after the merger. From 2005, just after the merger, to 2020, the population fell by some eleven thousand, and the share aged 65 and over rose to 32.7%. Its wide city area includes former town-and-village districts where depopulation advances, and amid the flow of the younger generation moving to cities such as Fukuoka, the fall of population and the deepening of aging can be read as occurring at once.

On the other hand, the household-with-children share is a high 23.2%, and the waitlist has moved at zero. This can be read as an expression of how the fishery as a port town of the Genkai Sea, and local industry, have kept a certain number of young households tied here. On the other hand, the Fiscal Capacity Index of 0.43 is a level that does not reach even half of expenditure with its own tax revenue, with a large reliance on the allocation tax. It reflects that, against the expenditure that supports a wide city area, the tax source is limited. The port town of castle and ceramics now loses population and deepens its aging, while the household-with-children share is high and the body of its finances is on the weak side. The population falls, the aging passes three in ten, the body of the finances is on the weak side. A falling indicator and a kept indicator stand at once in this land, a port town of the Genkai Sea. Pull out only one of the numbers and you mistake the town’s figure.

In Karatsu, several functions tied together by way of the sea are piled up. One is the past of the land of Nagoya Castle, which Hideyoshi built as a base for an expedition to the continent, holding the origin of having become, for a time, the center of the realm. Another is Karatsu Castle and the Niji-no-Matsubara pine grove, which Terazawa Hirotaka built, holding the memory of a castle town facing the Genkai Sea. And Karatsu ware, fired with a craft brought across the sea, gives this port town the face of a ceramic tradition.

Karatsu is a port town of castle and ceramics, the nearest to the continent. From the land of Nagoya Castle, a base for an expedition, to the castle town of Karatsu Castle, to the land of Karatsu ware, a craft brought across the sea — a single position, "facing the Genkai Sea, nearest to the continent," called a castle, called a castle town, called ceramics. Nagoya Castle, Karatsu Castle and Karatsu ware all share the origin of a port that faced this sea.