News Kobe's population drops below 1.5 million

Kobe's estimated population dropped to 1,499,887 in October 2023, the first time falling below 1.5 million since 2001. Kobe Mayor Hisamoto Kizo said that the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake had significantly strained the city's finances, delaying economic promotion and urban development.

Kobe's population declined after peaking at 1.545 million in 2011. It was surpassed by Fukuoka in 2015 and Kawasaki in 2019. The 2020 national census ranked Kobe's population seventh among the 20 government ordinance-designated cities. The Kobe city government said a notable population decline was seen in the large-scale "new towns" it developed in suburban areas, including Kita and Nishi wards, during the high economic growth of the 1960s and subsequent years. The number of residents there fell by 29,000 in the past five years from 515,000 in 2015.

Click to expand...

The Top 10 Japanese cities ranked by population:

[TABLE=collapse]
[TR]
[TH]City[/TH]

[TH]Population[/TH]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Tokyo[/TD]
[TD]14,095,231[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Yokohama[/TD]
[TD]3,772,440[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Osaka[/TD]
[TD]2,768,671[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Nagoya[/TD]
[TD]2,326,191[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Sapporo[/TD]
[TD]1,958,942[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Fukuoka[/TD]
[TD]1,641,854[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Kawasaki[/TD]
[TD]1,545,581[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Kobe[/TD]
[TD]1,500,693[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Kyoto[/TD]
[TD]1,442,774[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Saitama[/TD]
[TD]1,344,480[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

Source: Wikipedia (data from September 2023)

The jump off the cliff from #1 to #2....

I never realized that Nagoya and Osaka were so close. I always thought of Osaka as the big city and Nagoya as kind of rural. I also never really realized that Kobe had so many people. I guess the proximity of so many population centers explains the large number of private railways in the Kansai region, but I had never thought about it.

It's just a rural city of 2.5 million.

That's about the size of the city my wife is from, and it's practically in the sticks (in mainland China).

Mikawa Ossan said:

That's about the size of the city my wife is from, and it's practically in the sticks (in mainland China).

Click to expand...

Yes, in China that would be rural for sure.

Mikawa Ossan said:

That's about the size of the city my wife is from, and it's practically in the sticks (in mainland China).

Click to expand...

I remember when we visited Hangzhou more than 15 years ago they told us the city had 4 million inhabitants - that was half the population of my country. Now the city has a staggering 8 million and is still considered medium-sized.