Fukuoka's 16 years,
by the numbers.

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What drove the population growth?

A strong focus on startup support and attracting businesses brought more than 50 companies to the city every year for 13 straight years, creating about 29,000 jobs. Revenue generated by the city's growth has gone into child-rearing support, education, welfare, and other measures that raise residents' quality of life. Residents rate it highly: 97.4% say Fukuoka is a good place to live, and the city has the highest share of young people among designated cities.

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What raised public trust?

Objective indicators such as population growth and the business startup rate kept improving, and the city's finances were run with future generations in mind, cutting city debt and building up the fiscal adjustment fund (its rainy-day reserve). Disaster prevention and mitigation efforts, along with communication that reaches residents directly, have also helped underpin that trust.

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What exactly was done?

Step by step, the city opened after-school care to children through 6th grade, extended medical expense subsidies for children through the final year of high school, and made daycare free from the second child on. To clear daycare waiting lists, it greatly expanded daycare capacity and added more options for sick-child care and temporary childcare. Revenue generated by the city's growth is being used to ease the burden on families raising children.

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What do people value?

A compact layout that puts city and nature side by side, everyday convenience for getting around and shopping, and strong support for families all make Fukuoka easy to live in, earning it the top spot six years in a row.

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What exactly was done?

It began with the 2012 Startup City Fukuoka Declaration. In 2014, Fukuoka was designated a National Strategic Special Zone (the Global Startup and Job Creation Special Zone) and opened the Startup Cafe. In 2017 it opened the startup support facility Fukuoka Growth Next (FGN), creating one-stop support that takes founders from their first consultation through fundraising to business growth.

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What drove land prices up?

Along with population growth and more companies setting up in the city, a major factor has been stronger urban functions: downtown redevelopment through Tenjin Big Bang and Hakata Connected, and easier travel thanks to the Nanakuma Subway Line extension.

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What drove the rise in tax revenue?

The city's growth has fed straight into tax revenue: more individual municipal tax from a growing population, more corporate municipal tax as more companies set up and earn more, and more fixed asset (property) tax as private investment such as Tenjin Big Bang and Hakata Connected moved ahead and land prices rose.

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Doesn't the city lose out when national grants shrink?

Local allocation tax grants are funds the national government distributes so that every region can maintain a standard level of public services, and 75% of a local government's standard tax revenue is counted in the calculation. So when city tax revenue rises, the grant shrinks accordingly. The more a city earns on its own, the less it receives from the national government, but the money freed up goes to other local governments. Of Japan's 1,718 municipalities, only 82 receive no grant (83 including the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, FY2024), and among the 20 designated cities only two, Kawasaki and Nagoya, receive none. Fukuoka still receives grants. Even so, by continuing to grow its tax revenue, it has seen its grants fall by about ¥500 billion in total. A city's growth benefits not just that city, but the finances of the whole country.

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Why is city debt going down?

Administrative and fiscal reforms, including a review of no-bid contracts (worth ¥14.7 billion), dissolving city-affiliated organizations, and outsourcing skilled manual jobs, have freed up more than ¥100 billion since he took office. Along with city tax revenue growing about 1.6-fold, urban development that harnesses private-sector energy, starting with Tenjin Big Bang, has helped bring city debt down.

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Why did the future burden ratio improve?

As the city kept growing, with a rising population, it increased tax revenue while steadily reducing city debt (down about 28%, or ¥656.8 billion, from before he took office). It also built up the fiscal adjustment fund, its reserve for the unexpected, about 3.8-fold. The future burden ratio is a nationally standardized indicator: it takes the debt and other obligations a city will have to pay in the future, subtracts the funds and other resources set aside to repay them, and compares the result with the size of the city's finances. The lower the number, the smaller the future fiscal burden. By continuing to cut debt while building reserves, Fukuoka improved the ratio by about 170 points, from 219.8% before he took office to 50.4%, far below the national early-warning threshold (400% for designated cities).

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Why is the fiscal adjustment fund growing?

The city has worked on both revenue and spending: growth brought in more tax revenue, and administrative and fiscal reforms freed up more than ¥100 billion. As a result, the fund set aside for future emergencies has grown about 3.8-fold.

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What exactly was done?

The city shifted from on-street bike parking to dedicated parking facilities and added more than 22,000 spaces in the bike parking that buildings are required to provide. It also introduced bike share, with more than 800 ports and about 4,700 bikes. Alongside more places to park, ongoing campaigns on parking manners and the removal of abandoned bikes cut their number by more than 90% from before he took office.

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What drove his growing support?

Balancing urban growth, through Tenjin Big Bang and startup support, with stronger child-rearing support, education, and welfare, while consistently managing finances with future generations in mind, such as by cutting city debt, has won him more support at every election.

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In an era of population decline, why did the city grow more than before?

A “headwind” for Japan as a whole
Japan's population peaked around 2010 and began to fall. Over the next 15 years it shrank by about 5.01 million. From 2020 to 2025, Fukuoka Prefecture as a whole declined for the first time, and Kitakyushu City lost about 35,000 people.

Two ways a population grows
Whether a population rises or falls depends on two things added together: people born minus people who died (natural change), and people who moved in minus people who moved out (social change). In the 15 years before he took office, Japan as a whole was still growing, so both were tailwinds.

What makes Fukuoka City different?
Around 2021, Fukuoka City also entered “natural decrease,” with more deaths than births. Even so, in 2022 the “social increase” from people moving in was about 15,000, far more than the natural decrease (about 2,000). The city grew by about 13,000 in one year, No. 1 among all cities and wards in Japan. Good places to work and a strong environment for raising and educating children keep drawing young people, and that is what drives this trend (the share of young people is No. 1 among designated cities).

That's why it's “impressive”
The city grew more after he took office, against a headwind (+200,000), than before, with a tailwind (+179,000). Its population growth rate from 2020 to 2025 was also No. 1 among designated cities (+3.2%).