Sasebo-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 243,000 (243,223 in 2020). Over the five years from the 255,439 of 2015, it fell by some twelve thousand. What should be looked at here is the difference in substance when set beside Shimonoseki and Hakodate, which also fell greatly.

Those under fifteen fell by some two thousand, from 33,765 (2015) to 31,507 (2020). In the same five years the share aged 65 and over rose from 28.8% to 31.7%. Aging proceeds, but compared with Shimonoseki (35.4%) and Hakodate (35.5%), which passed one in three, it stays at a level barely over three in ten. The household-with-children share is 19.9% (2020), the highest among the three cities. The land price of residential land is around 44,000 yen per m² (43,700 yen, 2026), also the highest among the three. The Fiscal Capacity Index is 0.53 (2023) — a structure covering a little over half of standard expenditure with its own tax revenue and making up the rest with the local allocation tax and the like. The Childcare Waitlist was 0 in 2025. The population falls greatly, yet the layer of children and the household-with-children share are thicker than in Shimonoseki and Hakodate — where this difference comes from cannot be read without going back to the past of a fine harbor and a naval port.

The urban area of Sasebo stands upon a pile of functions drawn in by its original landform. This district in the north of Nagasaki Prefecture was, in the early Meiji era, no more than a fishing village of a few thousand people. But the geographic condition that its intricate bay formed a natural fine harbor came to decide this town’s fate.

The first foundation is the naval port. In 1889 the navy opened the Sasebo Naval District at this fine harbor. Chosen as one of the four great naval ports alongside Yokosuka, Kure and Maizuru, the fishing village of a few thousand swelled rapidly into a city. It is a clear instance of the type that economic geography calls "a base facility raising a city from nothing." In 1903 the Sasebo Naval Arsenal was established, and the town stored up technique and craftsmen as a place that built and repaired warships.

After the war this town swapped its function. Succeeding to the equipment of the naval arsenal, the Sasebo Heavy Industries (SSK) was established in 1946, and the navy’s shipbuilding technique was moved into private shipbuilding. In 1950 the Former Naval Port Cities Conversion Act took effect — a law to convert the four cities of Yokosuka, Kure, Sasebo and Maizuru into "peaceful-industry port cities," a framework for reusing the harbor facilities and the store of technique built up as a naval port as an industrial harbor. The present Sasebo, together with manufacturing such as shipbuilding, is the center of commerce and services for the northern Nagasaki region. The inlet that was a fishing village of a few thousand was chosen as a naval port because of the condition of a fine harbor, and after the war swapped that store onto shipbuilding and a northern-prefecture base — this town’s form is the result of functions of each age piled upon a natural fine harbor.

What characterizes Sasebo is that, even amid falling twelve thousand over five years, the layer of children and the household-with-children share are kept thicker than in Shimonoseki and Hakodate, which also fell greatly. The aging rate is 31.7%, staying lower than the two cities, which passed 35%. The household-with-children share of 19.9% reflects a household composition as the central city of the northern prefecture, different even from neighboring Nagasaki City (the prefectural capital of Nagasaki Prefecture).

The Childcare Waitlist is 0. But this too, like Shimonoseki and Hakodate, remains a zero amid a falling absolute number of children. What differs is the speed of the fall: the decline of those under fifteen, at some two thousand, is gentler than in the two cities, which fell by over three thousand. The Fiscal Capacity Index of 0.53 shows a structure covering a little over half of standard expenditure with its own tax revenue, the highest among the three cities. That receptacles for employment — shipbuilding and manufacturing, and the commerce and services of the northern prefecture — remain here in a form different from the fisheries and ferry lines of Shimonoseki and Hakodate can be read behind the difference in the thickness of the layer of children and the fiscal capacity. Still, this is a description of a structural difference, not an evaluation. With a single number alone, the town’s outline does not form.

In Sasebo, several functions piled upon the single point of a natural fine harbor exist. One is the cluster of manufacturing, beginning with shipbuilding that used the natural fine harbor, with the shipbuilding industry that inherited the technique of the former naval arsenal still rooted in the harbor. Another is the role of the center of commerce and services for the northern Nagasaki region, functioning as a base city of the northern prefecture, apart from Nagasaki City, the prefectural capital. Further, tourism resources such as Huis Ten Bosch and the Kujukushima islands, included in the Saikai National Park, support another face of this town.

From a fishing village of a few thousand to a naval-port town, to a shipbuilding town, and further to a base city of the northern prefecture — the single condition of "a natural fine harbor" has swapped a different function onto itself in each age. The naval facilities, the shipbuilding that inherited the naval arsenal, the industrial harbor opened by the Former Naval Port Cities Conversion Act, and the tourist sites all rest, in origin, upon the same landform of an intricate bay. The condition of a fine harbor drew in function after function and reused some of them as other functions.