Monbetsu-shi

In the most recent Population Census the population is about twenty-one thousand (21,215 in 2020). From 28,476 in 2000, through 26,632 (2005), 24,750 (2010) and 23,109 (2015), it reached 21,215 in 2020 — some seventy-three hundred fewer over twenty years, settling around twenty thousand.

Look inside the figure and you see a fishing-port city on a drift-ice coast. The share aged 65 and over rose from 20.3% in 2000 to 36.3% in 2020, up about sixteen points in twenty years, exceeding one in three. Households with children were 12.9% in 2020. The childcare waitlist was zero in 2024, but two in 2025 — a small number has appeared. The Fiscal Capacity Index was 0.33 in FY2023 — its own tax revenue covers only a little over thirty percent of expenditure, a level heavily dependent on the local allocation tax. A fishing port on a drift-ice coast that once held a gold mine, having lost the mine and the railway, falling toward twenty thousand — that is what the numbers show. Why it takes this shape cannot be read without going back through the history of the fishing port and the gold mine.

This town’s skeleton is set down by a coastal fishing port where drift ice presses in, by a gold mine in the hills, and by the loss of the railway that linked the town inland. The first layer is the sea and fishing. On this coast facing the northern sea, drift ice presses in and reaches the shore each winter. On that sea, the town has walked its road as a fishing port landing the harvest of the sea. Later a drift-ice icebreaking sightseeing vessel, modeled on an icebreaker used for Alaskan oilfield development, began to operate, and the drift-ice sea became one of the town’s faces. Sea and drift ice were one of this town’s foundations.

But this town’s other foundation lay not in the sea but in the hills. In the hills was a gold mine found in the early twentieth century; a large zaibatsu acquired the mining rights and developed it, and from before to after the war it was called the richest gold mine in the East. At the peak more than ten thousand people lived in that mining town. But as the price of gold fell and the deposit ran out, the gold mine closed in the late 1960s and early 70s. Further, the railway that linked the town to an inland town also vanished at the end of the 1980s, with the decline in ridership. The drift-ice coastal fishing port, the gold mine called the richest in the East, and the lost railway — this town’s shape rests on the history in which two foundations, the sea’s fishing port and the hills’ gold mine, lost one of the two and lost the railway as well.

What characterizes Monbetsu is that, carrying the history of the Okhotsk fishing port and the phantom gold mine, it has cut its population toward twenty thousand over twenty years. From 28,476 in 2000 to 21,215 in 2020, it lost some seventy-three hundred in twenty years. Of the two foundations — the sea’s fishing port and the hills’ gold mine — the hills’ gold mine closed as its deposit ran out, and the railway linking the town inland vanished too. After losing the hill livelihood and the railway inland, with the sea’s fishing port and the livelihood of receiving those who visit the drift ice remaining, part of the younger generation can be read as having moved toward larger cities, raising the age of the town as a whole. The share aged 65 and over reaching 36.3% in 2020, exceeding one in three, is its expression.

Meanwhile the childcare waitlist was zero in 2024 but two in 2025 — a small number has appeared. Households with children were 12.9% in 2020. A Fiscal Capacity Index of 0.33 is a level at which its own tax revenue covers only a little over thirty percent of expenditure, showing the degree of reliance on the local allocation tax. A fishing port facing the northern sea, the processing that follows from it, and the livelihood that treats drift ice as a resource can be read as supporting the tax base around thirty percent. A population around twenty thousand, aging exceeding one in three, finances a little over thirty percent. Because the foundation of the sea’s fishing port remained, it has not dropped as abruptly as an inland town that lost all its shafts. Only by setting what was lost and what remained on the same scale does it come into view why this town’s gradient has stopped at this angle.

Monbetsu carries several things. One is its history as an Okhotsk fishing port — a coast facing the northern sea where drift ice reaches the shore in winter, landing the harvest of the sea and later running an icebreaking sightseeing vessel. Another is its character: not in the sea but in the hills it held a gold mine found in the early twentieth century and called the richest in the East, with more than ten thousand people living in that mining town. And it carries the experience of loss in which that gold mine closed as its deposit ran out, and the railway that linked the town inland vanished too. One and the same town held two foundations — the sea’s fishing port and the hills’ gold mine.

From the drift-ice coastal fishing port, to the gold mine called the richest in the East, and on to the lost railway. The geography of a coast where drift ice reaches the shore in winter and the hills behind it gave the same town two foundations of differing nature — the sea’s fishing port and the hills’ gold mine. In time the gold mine and the railway inland alone vanished, and the sea’s fishing port remained. Monbetsu’s present is the standing position, now, of a town that lost one of the two and kept the other.