Kyoto

Medicine ranked 3rd in the nation and a birth rate ranked 43rd coexist in the same prefecture—this is why Kyoto cannot be called simply average. The indicators gather near the national average, the dispersion is standard, and as a profile it looks moderate. But that moderate overall verdict conceals the large gap drawn by the two poles. The highest is the number of physicians (per 100,000 people), a strength ranked 3rd nationally; the lowest is the birth rate (total fertility rate), a weakness ranked 43rd.

What is structurally important is that this strength is not transient. Medicine is not reliant on a single indicator but uniformly high in level, and on top of that average life expectancy runs about 1.8σ above the level expected from the prefecture’s overall capability—a hidden strength above the underlying level. On the other hand, housing (home-ownership rate) and economic strength (unemployment rate) are in the lower national ranks, and the clear split between the strong domain and the weak domain is the real image of Kyoto.

The high standing of a World Heritage site also does not directly fill in the real numbers of the birth rate or home-ownership rate. A prefecture where the strong domain and the weak domain split as sharply as in Kyoto is rare—the direction of 3rd-place medicine and the direction of a 43rd-place birth rate face exactly opposite on the map of the same prefecture. To speak of both under the single banner of “Kyoto-ness” forces the standing of a thousand-year capital and the figure of children not being born into the same axis of evaluation. I want to proceed to the next while keeping them lined up as separate axes of evaluation.

Kyoto’s future holds a topic unique among prefectures. The Hokuriku Shinkansen section from Tsuruga to Shin-Osaka has been decided on the Obama–Kyoto route, with a plan to pass beneath Kyoto City, but the prefectural governor has not relaxed a cautious stance, demanding appropriate handling of construction challenges such as groundwater and excavated soil. Concerns have also come from bodies such as the Kyoto Buddhist Federation, and it is a contested stage in which the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism and the Japan Railway Construction, Transport and Technology Agency are holding repeated briefings for municipalities within the prefecture. The route is settled, but the groundwater of a thousand-year capital—an irreplaceable resource—is making the timing of construction uncertain. A composition very like Kyoto, in which benefit and preservation push against each other.

And there is another point: the direction is not single. The generational turnover concentrated in 2031–33 and the rising vacant-home ratio push downward, while overseas real-estate investment by wealthy foreigners against the backdrop of a weak yen and recovering inbound tourism—targeting mainly Kyoto City—runs as a force in the opposite direction. This is a short-term factor that swings with exchange rates and regulation, a two-sided force where the benefit of concentrated tourism and the difficulty of acquiring a place to live coexist. In addition, the prefecture is advancing development of the Kitayama area (a base for performing and visual arts), at the stage of gathering residents’ opinions through workshops—a thousand-year capital beginning to place the renewal of a cultural base on the same scale.

A present of breakthrough medicine, a Shinkansen blocked by groundwater, contesting demographics and foreign investment. Within the same prefecture, four forces of utterly different certainty—benefit, preservation, short-term investment, and long-term population decline—each move on their own clocks. Round them into a single “Kyoto-ness” and the topic of groundwater, the short-term nature of foreign investment, and the weight of the birth rate all look the same thinness—writing the four into separate registers is the minimum practice for not lumping a thousand-year capital together carelessly. The individual schedules, plans, and degrees of certainty are lined up one by one in the development roadmap at the bottom of the page.