Yubari-shi

In the most recent Population Census the population is about 7,300 (7,334 in 2020). From 14,791 in 2000, through 13,001 in 2005, 10,922 in 2010 and 8,843 in 2015, it became 7,334 in 2020 — less than half in twenty years. Even within Hokkaido, the cities that reduced their population on so steep a slope can be counted on the fingers.

Look at the contents and the figure of a coal town that has closed its shafts stands out more than any other indicator. The share aged 65 and over rose from 33.6% in 2000 to 52.2% in 2020, climbing nearly nineteen points in twenty years, now passing one in two of the residents. The household-with-children rate, at just 7.8% in 2020, is among the lowest levels of any city I have seen. The childcare waitlist was zero in both 2024 and 2025. The Fiscal Capacity Index was 0.19 in fiscal 2023; own tax revenue does not even reach two-tenths of expenditure. The figure of a town in a mountain valley of coal, having closed its shafts and passed through a fiscal collapse, holding at once a halving of population and the advance of aging, appears in the numbers. Why it came to this shape cannot be read without tracing back the origins of coal and finance.

This town’s skeleton is set by the coal found upstream on a river in a mountain valley, by the more than one hundred ten thousand people it gathered, by the closure of the shafts, and by a fiscal collapse. The beginning layer is coal. At the close of the nineteenth century, a large coal outcrop was found upstream on the river flowing through the valley, and two years later a railway company opened a shaft. As the core of the Ishikari coalfield, shafts were opened one after another, and at its height more than one hundred ten thousand people lived in this valley. Coal gave birth to the very town.

But the era’s fuel shifted. In the 1960s, as the fuel of living and of factories shifted from coal to oil, the valley’s shafts closed one by one, and in the early 1990s the last shaft put out its light. After the coal that had gathered the people departed, what remained was a valley the people had left, and the burden piled up for the conversion to tourism and the like. In time, in this town, the accumulation of deficits from short-term borrowing and the like surfaced, and it could no longer cover its expenditure with its own income. In the early twenty-first century this town entered the road of repaying its debt under state management, and later moved to a stricter framework of rebuilding. Coal in a mountain valley, a population of one hundred ten thousand, the closure of the last shaft, and a fiscal collapse. Trace these four in turn and a single chain of cause appears: a single resource found at the bottom of the valley summoned the people, and after that resource was forsaken by the era, only a valley the people had left and a burden it could not finish repaying remained. Yubari’s present numbers are placed at the tail end of that chain.

What characterizes Yubari-shi is that, carrying the origins of the rise and fall of coal and a fiscal collapse, it has reduced its population to less than half in twenty years. From 14,791 in 2000 to 7,334 in 2020, some seventy-five hundred — that is, more than half — were lost in twenty years. The population that at its height passed one hundred ten thousand left the valley with the closure of the shafts, and the fiscal collapse reads as having added further spur to that flow. That the remaining households are high in age, with the share aged 65 and over passing one in two at 52.2% in 2020, is the consequence.

Meanwhile, the childcare waitlist was zero in both 2024 and 2025, but it is more accurate to read this not as the place of child-rearing being generous, but as the reverse face of the household-with-children rate itself being extremely low at 7.8% in 2020, so that the number of children waiting for childcare is itself small. The Fiscal Capacity Index of 0.19 shows a level where own tax revenue does not even reach two-tenths of expenditure — a level that cannot stand without the support of the state. The town in the valley with its shafts closed keeps reducing its population even now. A population halved, aging passing one in two, finance short of two-tenths — these are all separate gradations of the same event that occurred in a single valley the coal departed. With any one figure alone, what happened to this valley cannot be told.

In the town of Yubari, several origins lie folded into a single valley. One is the origin as the core of the Ishikari coalfield, where a large coal outcrop was found upstream on the river in the mountain valley, shafts were opened one after another, and at its height more than one hundred ten thousand people were gathered. The other is the character whereby, the era’s fuel having shifted to oil and all the shafts having closed, the town could no longer cover its expenditure with its own income and entered the road of repaying its debt under state management. And the valley, a closed landform, made the town stake its fate on a single resource, coal, and widened the gap when that resource departed.

From the discovery of a large coal outcrop, to a population of one hundred ten thousand, to the closure of the last shaft, and on to a fiscal collapse. The closed valley, upstream on a river in the mountains, made the town stake its existence on a single resource, and when that resource departed, it held no side road to let the people escape into another livelihood. What made Yubari into its present form, in my reading, is not coal itself so much as the closed shape of a valley that had no choice but to entrust everything to that coal. The resource departed, and only the valley remained.