Oita-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 476,000 (475,614 in 2020). Over the five years from the 478,146 of 2015, it fell by some two thousand five hundred. As a prefectural capital, it has entered a phase of shrinking gently while keeping nearly its scale.

What should be looked at here is that the number of children is falling faster than the total. Those under fifteen fell by some three thousand two hundred, from 66,116 (2015) to 62,944 (2020). In the same period the share aged 65 and over rose from 24.3% to 27.2%. Behind a nearly flat total population, the inside is shifting its center of gravity toward the elderly side. The household-with-children share is 20.9% in 2020 — high among the three cities treated here. The land price of residential land is around 57,000 yen per m². The Fiscal Capacity Index is 0.86 — below 1.0, but a high level for a regional prefectural capital; the tax revenue piled up by the coastal industry has a side of lifting up this number. The structure itself of making up the part below 1.0 with the local allocation tax is a mechanism broadly common to regional cities, and is not a matter of good or bad. The Childcare Waitlist is 0 in 2025. Why these numbers take this form cannot be read without going back to the past of the castle town and the new industrial city.

Oita’s skeleton is a line that post-war national policy laid anew over an old castle town. In old times the provincial government of Bungo Province was placed in this land, and it was called "Funai." In medieval times it developed as the castle town of the Otomo family, and in the Warring-States period, under Otomo Yoshishige — Sorin — known as a Christian daimyo, it became a land into which the goods of the southern barbarians flowed. The city formation centered on a castle town, as historical geography calls it, was this town’s first foundation.

The second foundation, the one that decided this town’s present form, is the post-war industrialization. Coming through post-war reconstruction, in 1963 Oita City merged with six neighboring cities, towns and villages to become a new "Oita City." The following year, 1964, it received the national designation as a new industrial city. The new-industrial-city policy was a framework in which the state chose key areas and advanced their industrialization in a concentrated way, and Oita was chosen as one. Taking this as an opening, the basic-materials industries of steel, chemicals and petroleum advanced onto the coast.

What was thus formed is the Oita Coastal Industrial Zone — a composite industrial zone holding both one of the country’s leading steelworks and a petrochemical complex. Off the inland urban district that had opened as a castle town, the heavy and large industries invited by national policy lined up in a band along the coast. The city of the old castle town and the coastal industry set there after the war — this town is made of two layers of differing character, overlaid. And the tax revenue the coastal industry piles up has become a structure that supports the living of the inland urban district from the side of finance.

What characterizes Oita is that, while the total population keeps nearly flat, the number of children is falling faster. Against the total falling by some two thousand five hundred, those under fifteen fell by some three thousand two hundred — a form in which the fall of children runs ahead of the fall of the total. This differs in the structure of its decline from a town like Nagasaki, where the total and the children both fall greatly together. The coastal industry supports employment and tax revenue and the town’s scale is kept, but within it the turnover of generations is surely advancing toward the elderly side.

The Childcare Waitlist is 0. The household-with-children share, at 20.9%, is high among the three cities, and the zero waitlist can be read as a balance in which supply has caught up with demand amid children falling. The absolute number of children is not thinning as suddenly as in Nagasaki; Oita is partway through gentle aging while keeping its scale. The total is kept, the children fall, and the share of the elderly passes a quarter — in an industrial prefectural capital where these proceed at once, the zero of the waitlist, too, appears as one balance point. This number, too, will be mistaken in meaning if not read together with its background.

The functions Oita holds are not one. The inland urban district starting from the Bungo provincial government and the castle town of the Otomo family leaves to this day the layer of the old city called "Funai." The Oita Coastal Industrial Zone, set along the coast after receiving the designation as a new industrial city, supports this town’s present economy as a composite industrial zone holding both a steelworks and a petrochemical complex.

Oita became, through the 1964 designation as a new industrial city, a prefectural capital holding a band of heavy and large industry off an old castle town. The castle town’s urban district, the coastal steelworks, and the petrochemical complex are all, in origin, set across the ages upon the same location — a flatland facing the Bungo sea. Over the origin of a medieval castle town, post-war national policy laid one more layer. Two layers of differing character dwell together within one city, and the coastal industry supports the inland living from the side of finance — how to read on from here I would hand to the reader who holds this town against their own living.