Hiroshima Prefecture

The “rebuilding” style shows up in the numbers of daily life in an unexpected form. What draws the contour are the two ends—the highest average life expectancy and the lowest home-ownership rate. The indicators in between line up broadly near the national average, appearing as a balanced profile where neither a standout nor a fatal single collapse is easy to see. But the combination of the two ends speaks the prefecture’s core.

On the strength side, in addition to average life expectancy, the economic-strength indicators—the complete unemployment rate (8th) and per-capita prefectural income (12th)—are relatively in the upper ranks. The power to earn is not weak. And yet the home-ownership rate sinks to the lowest side in the country (38th). Income is there, yet only the figure for putting down roots in the fixed form of a home is low—this can be read less as a weakness than as the flip side of a city’s nimbleness in rebuilding rather than holding on. In Hiroshima, the total volume of affluence and the fixing of life to one place are separate stories.

The weight of tourism and history radiated by the two World Heritage sites does not directly fill in the real number that is the home-ownership rate, either. Viewed only through an overall ranking or a single standardized score, this prefecture’s core—“earning without fixing its roots”—is leveled by the average and never comes into view. The power that kept the shrine of Miyajima without destroying it, and the power that rebuilt the city from ash—within the same Hiroshima, a practice of keeping and a practice of rebuilding coexist. I read the lowness of the home-ownership rate not as a simple weakness but as the flip side of the nimbleness to rebuild. I want to keep the pair of the two lined up as separate axes of evaluation.

The upside ahead, too, comes for Hiroshima by way of “rebuilding,” as ever. The JR West group, together with Hiroshima City and Hiroshima Electric Railway, rebuilt the Hiroshima Station building, and the new station building opened in March 2025 (with the tram running into the second floor of the station building, among other features). Furthermore, the football stadium “Edion Peace Wing Hiroshima” opened within Central Park in 2024 and became a downtown stadium within walking distance of Kamiyacho and Hatchobori, a hub of activity in the city center. Rebuilding the prefectural capital quite literally—just as in Hiroshima’s style seen in the past section, these are already-realized upsides that work by being placed at the center of Hiroshima City. Their certainty is not a concept but already opened and in service.

Meanwhile, the weight ahead faces the whole of the prefecture. The generational turnover concentrated in 2031–33 and the phase of a rising vacant-home ratio point downward, and in the projections of the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research the prefecture enters a phase of decline. Whereas the benefit of the station building and stadium works locally in the center of Hiroshima City, the population dynamics work across the entire prefecture—a force on a different layer. What can be rebuilt is one corner of the city center, while the weight thinly spread across the broad area sits on a separate scale.

A present built by rebuilding; the local upside of an already-realized renewal of the prefectural capital; the prefecture-wide weight of population dynamics. Whether the benefit reaches beyond the one rebuilt corner—mistake that question, and the scenery of a new station building and stadium gets mistaken for the scenery of the whole prefecture. I want to write the reach of the benefit and the reach of the population dynamics on separate tables every time, and keep observing without adding them up. The individual schedules, plans, and degrees of certainty are lined up stage by stage in the development roadmap at the bottom of the page.