Abashiri-shi

In the most recent Population Census the population is about 36,000 (35,759 in 2020). From 43,395 in 2000, through 42,045 in 2005, 40,998 in 2010 and 39,077 in 2015, it became 35,759 in 2020 — losing some seventy-six hundred in twenty years as it passed below forty thousand.

Look at the contents and the figure of a fishing-port city on the drift-ice shore appears. The share aged 65 and over rose from 16.9% in 2000 to 31.5% in 2020, climbing about fifteen points in twenty years, passing a third. The household-with-children rate is 15.2% (2020). The childcare waitlist was zero in both 2024 and 2025. The Fiscal Capacity Index was 0.44 in fiscal 2023 — a level where own tax revenue does not reach half of expenditure, leaning heavily on the local allocation tax. The figure of a drift-ice shore opened by convict labour, walking on as a fishing port of the sea’s harvest while it reduces its population below forty thousand, appears in the numbers. Why this shape arises cannot be read without tracing back the origins of the convicts’ road and the sea’s harvest.

This town’s skeleton is set by the landform of a shore the drift ice blocked, by the northward road convicts opened, and by a fishing port of the sea’s harvest. The beginning layer is the drift ice. On this shore facing the northern sea, drift ice presses in and reaches the land each winter. Blocked by that bitter cold and ice, the place was long left out of settlement, a land where the fishing grounds opened only through the summer. The drift ice was the first condition that delayed the opening of this land.

What gave a thread to opening it was convicts, moved here from a prison in another place. At the close of the nineteenth century, to cut through a road leading north, convicts were moved in a great migration to this shore, and a prison was set down. In a little over a year they opened a hundred-and-sixty-kilometre road as far as the northern pass, and the prison that was the base of that labour continues to this day as a prison, while the Meiji-era cells are preserved and known on the mid-slope of Mount Tento. Once the land was opened, this shore walked on as a port landing the harvest of the sea. A shore the drift ice blocked, the northward road convicts opened, and a fishing port of the sea’s harvest — this town’s form stands upon the origin of a drift-ice shore opened by convict labour.

What characterizes Abashiri-shi is that, carrying the origins of the road convicts opened and the sea’s harvest, it reduces its population below forty thousand in twenty years. From 43,395 in 2000 to 35,759 in 2020, some seventy-six hundred were lost in twenty years. As a fishing port landing the northern sea’s harvest, and as a town receiving those who come for the history beginning with the convicts’ road and for the drift ice, it has walked on; but a part of the younger generations has moved toward larger cities, and the age of the town as a whole reads as having risen. That the share aged 65 and over passed a third at 31.5% in 2020 is one expression of that.

Meanwhile, the childcare waitlist was zero in both 2024 and 2025, and the household-with-children rate is 15.2% (2020). The Fiscal Capacity Index of 0.44 is a level where own tax revenue does not reach half of expenditure, showing the large reliance on the local allocation tax. The fishing port facing the northern sea, the processing that follows from it, and the livelihoods that take the convict-era history and the drift ice as resources, read as propping the tax base at around half. The drift-ice shore city, walking on as a fishing port of the sea’s harvest, has reduced its population below the forty-thousand mark and raised the age of the town. A population below forty thousand, aging past a third, finance not thick on tax revenue alone — these are a single course that a city standing on the northern sea has traced over time.

The origins Abashiri carries rest on a paradox: a human force pried open a land that nature refused. One is the condition of the landform — a shore facing the northern sea where drift ice reaches the land in winter, long left out of settlement, blocked by that ice. The other is the character whereby that land was opened, together with the northward road, by the labour of convicts moved here from a prison in another place, and the prison that was its base remains to this day as a prison and as the preserved Meiji-era cells. And the very landform of a drift-ice shore drew the livelihood of a fishing port of the sea’s harvest into this town.

From a shore the drift ice blocked, to the northward road convicts opened, and on to a fishing port of the sea’s harvest. The northern shore, where drift ice reaches the land in winter, long refused the hand of settlement, and the thread that opened it was the labour of convicts moved here from a prison in another place. A land nature refused, pried open by a strong human force — in Abashiri’s making, that paradox is carved just as it is.

Lay out Abashiri’s numbers and the indicators of a fishing-port city on the drift-ice shore line up: a population below forty thousand, an aging rate of 31.5%, a household-with-children rate of 15.2%, a fiscal capacity of 0.44. But what I (Atlas) want to read through the eye of accounting is the origin whereby this town’s starting point was “a land the drift ice blocked, one nature did not open of itself.” This shore, where drift ice presses in upon the winter sea, was blocked by the bitter cold and long left out of settlement. The fact that the thread which opened that land was the labour of convicts moved here from a prison in another place explains well how this town’s map came to be drawn. The chain whereby a land that natural conditions refused was opened by a strong human force lies at the root of this town.

On a winter morning, the Okhotsk sea fills with white ice. In this town, where the day begins from beyond that drift ice, more than a hundred and thirty years ago people moved here from a prison in another place turned frozen earth, in a little over a year, into a hundred-and-sixty-kilometre road. The road they opened still runs over the pass and on to the north. And that same drift ice now supports the fishing and draws people in. A past that carried pain, and a nature that kept people away, have here become part of the living and the livelihood just as they are. Before the preserved Meiji-era cells, people who came to see the drift ice walk by. Into that scene, the population below forty thousand and the aging past a third quietly dissolve — to read Abashiri is to lay today’s numbers over that white sea and that single road.