Beppu-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 115,000 (115,321 in 2020). Over the five years from the 122,138 of 2015, it fell by some seven thousand. It is a city of Oita Prefecture that has entered a phase of decline.

The number of children is thinning faster than the total. Those under fifteen fell by some one thousand five hundred, from 13,396 (2015) to 11,840 (2020). In the same period the share aged 65 and over rose from 31.3% to 33.8%. The household-with-children share is 15.2% in 2020 — on the lower side even compared with other cities of Oita Prefecture. The population composition of a town centered on tourism and hot springs takes a form in which the child-raising layer is relatively thin. The land price of residential land is around 42,000 yen per m². The Fiscal Capacity Index is 0.55 in 2023, a structure in which the part not reaching 1.0 is made up by the local allocation tax. The Childcare Waitlist is 0 in 2025, which can be read as a balance amid the absolute number of children falling. Why these numbers take this form cannot be read without going back to the past surrounding the volcano’s hot water and the modern tourism development.

Beppu’s skeleton is a town where geography came first and industry was set later by human hand. First there is geography. The town of Beppu lies at the eastern foot of the volcanoes Mount Tsurumi (elevation 1,375 m) and Mount Garan. The hot springs welling from this volcanic land exceed 2,300 in the number of sources, about one-tenth of the country’s, and the volume of discharge is said to be the largest in the country. Eight hot-spring areas are scattered here and there about the town, collectively called the Beppu Eight Hot Springs. There is mention of the water even in the Bungo Fudoki of the Nara period; the history of the water itself is old. This geographical condition of "a large quantity of water coming out from underfoot" decided the town’s fortune — the first foundation.

But Beppu as a hot-spring town is not a case of an old spring simply becoming a modern tourist city. There is a history of being made as an industry. In 1873 a steamship route to Osaka was opened, and the modern tourism development of carrying bathers by sea route began. In 1912 the passenger-cargo ship "Benimaru," for tourism, linked Osaka and Beppu. In particular, a man named Aburaya Kumahachi advertised Beppu by investing his private fortune, and in 1916 realized a dedicated pier where steamships could berth. He is the man later called the father of Beppu tourism. The transport infrastructure and advertising that, as economic geography calls it, connect a resource to a market — this was the process that converted a geographical resource into a tourism industry. Onto the geography of the volcano’s hot water, the human hand of sea routes and advertising was added, and Beppu was made into an international tourism hot-spring cultural city that several million visit a year. The present population composition — the thinness of the child-raising layer, the employment tilted toward tourism — is not unrelated to this past of a town made around the tourism industry.

What characterizes Beppu is that, while the total population falls by some seven thousand, the number of children thins faster, and the household-with-children share is thin at 15.2%. That appears in the numbers of the living infrastructure, in a form peculiar to a town centered on the tourism industry. A town with employment tilted toward tourism and hot springs tends to hold a flow in which the younger generation goes out once, on the occasion of higher schooling or employment, and the thickness of the child-raising layer tends to become relatively thin. Beppu’s numbers mirror that tendency.

The Childcare Waitlist is 0. But this is not a zero arrived at after catching supply up amid children increasing. In Beppu, where the absolute number of children itself is falling, it can be read as a zero settled around where supply and demand balanced through demand shrinking — the same as in a town like Nobeoka where children thin. Even the same "zero waitlist" reads entirely differently depending on whether, behind it, children are increasing or thinning. The children fall, the share of the elderly nears a third, the households with children are thin, and the waitlist settles at zero — the numbers of Beppu’s living infrastructure can be read as the very result of the population composition of a town made around the tourism industry. Numbers, alone, do not form the image of a town.

The functions Beppu holds are not one. The tourism resource of a hot spring said to be the country’s largest in discharge, welling at the eastern foot of the volcanoes Mount Tsurumi and Mount Garan, is scattered here and there about the town as the Beppu Eight Hot Springs. The accumulation of the tourism industry built by sea routes and advertising from the Meiji era on — inns, bathhouses and related services — has formed the skeleton of the town’s employment. The Port of Beppu, the gateway of the route to Osaka, continues to bear the function of carrying people by sea.

Beppu is a tourist resort that several million visit a year, as an international tourism hot-spring cultural city. From an old land of hot water to a tourist city made in modern times by sea routes and advertising — the geography of "a large quantity of water coming out from underfoot" has loaded a different function in each age according to how the human hand was added. The water, the sea routes, and the tourism industry are all, in origin, set upon the same geography of the eastern foot of a volcano. The water already recorded in the Fudoki of the Nara period changed its form, through the Meiji sea routes and advertising, into an industry that now carries several million people.