Noboribetsu-shi

In the most recent census the population stood at about forty-six thousand (46,391 in 2020). Its course has been a consistent decline. From 54,761 in 2000, through 53,135 in 2005, 51,526 in 2010, 49,625 in 2015, to 46,391 in 2020 — more than eight thousand people lost in two decades.

Look inside the figures and the shape of a town shrinking while holding a tourist site and an industrial zone emerges. The share of residents aged 65 and over rose from 20.3% in 2000 to 37.3% in 2020, approaching four in ten. The share of child-rearing households was 17.0% in 2020, and childcare waitlists were zero in both 2024 and 2025. The Fiscal Capacity Index was 0.46 in FY2023, a level at which its own tax revenue covers only about half of expenditure, with a large reliance on the allocation tax. A town holding a steam-wreathed tourist site and a chimney-stacked industrial zone shows, in its numbers, deepening aging while shedding population. Why it takes this shape cannot be read without tracing the heritage of the hot-spring resort and the industrial sphere.

The frame of this town rests on two layers of differing character: the hot water that wells up at its eastern edge, and the industrial zone that spreads at its western edge. The eastern layer is the hot water. At the eastern edge of the municipal area there is a tract where white steam rises from across an entire valley and several thousand liters of hot water gush from the depths of the earth each minute. People have long come to bathe in this valley, which they likened to a hell and named accordingly. Known as a place of hot-spring cure since the Meiji era, in modern times it grew into one of Hokkaido's representative hot-spring resorts, and this tract was incorporated into a national park as well. The landscape woven by hot water and volcano made the town's eastern face.

The western layer is iron and industry. The western edge of this town continues straight on from the urban district of the neighboring city of iron. That city's industrial sphere — one of Hokkaido's foremost heavy-industry belts — drew in this town's western part as well, and factories for chemicals, ceramics, foods, and electronic components came to locate there. In the 1960s a dam to store industrial water was also built, and the town came to bear a corner of the industrial sphere. And the path by which it became a city also mirrors this town. In the early Meiji era this place began with the settling of retainers and craftsmen of a certain former domain of the Tohoku region; in the mid-Showa era it became a town, once bore a different place name, then chose the hot-spring resort's name as the city's name and became a city at the end of the 1960s. Hot water welling from the depths of the earth, and the industrial sphere of the neighboring city of iron: hot water wells at the eastern edge and factories line the western edge — this place facing the Pacific has kept two faces of differing character, tourism and industry, cohabiting within one municipal area. Noboribetsu today is the present form of a town holding both those faces.

What marks Noboribetsu-shi is that, holding two faces of a tourist site and an industrial zone, it has consistently shed population and deepened its aging. From 54,761 in 2000 to 46,391 in 2020, more than eight thousand people were lost in two decades. The number of people visiting the hot-spring resort is swayed by the fashions of travel and the economy of the moment, and the industrial sphere of the neighboring city of iron, too, lies within the waves of an era surrounding heavy industry. When neither of the two industries — tourism and industry — came to greatly increase the working places for younger generations in this town, the population can be read as having consistently declined as younger generations moved to urban areas. That the share of residents aged 65 and over approached four in ten at 37.3% in 2020 is an expression of that population composition.

At the same time, childcare waitlists were zero in both 2024 and 2025. A Fiscal Capacity Index of 0.46 is a level at which its own tax revenue covers only about half of expenditure, with a large reliance on the allocation tax. It mirrors that, even while holding tourism and industry, as the number of residents falls, limits have appeared in its own tax base. The town holding two faces is now deepening its aging while consistently shedding population. The population consistently declines, aging approaches four in ten, and fiscal strength is on the weak side. This shape — being unable to halt the population while holding two faces — arrives at the same single circumstance: that neither tourism nor industry could greatly increase the working places for younger generations. Picking out any one figure alone, that circumstance does not come into view.

In Noboribetsu, two faces of differing character stand side by side, east and west. One is a heritage as a hot-spring resort that holds, at the eastern edge of the municipal area, a tract where several thousand liters of hot water well up each minute from the depths of the earth and steam rises across an entire valley — a landscape of volcano and hot water incorporated into a national park. The other is a position where the western edge of the municipal area continues straight on into the urban district and industrial sphere of the neighboring city of iron, retaining the character of an industrial zone where factories for chemicals and ceramics locate. And this place, facing the Pacific, drew hot water to the east and industry to the west.

In short, Noboribetsu is a town that holds both hot water welling from the depths of the earth and the industrial sphere of the neighboring city of iron within one municipal area. From a steam-wreathed tourist site to a chimney-stacked industrial zone — both ends are joined by the geography of "opening onto a Pacific-coast volcanic belt and continuing on to the neighboring city of iron." The hot water the volcano brings called forth a steam-wreathed hot-spring resort to the east of the municipal area, and the nearness to the adjoining city of iron called forth a chimney-stacked industrial sphere to the west. Steam and chimneys — two expressions differing in both what rises and what resounds — stand side by side within the same Pacific-coast municipal area, without turning their backs on each other.