Yubari (Coal Mining Town) about 60 years ago and today

History of Yubari (Coal Mining Town)

Yubari is a town that was opened to mine coal. Tributaries of the Yubari River carve deeply into the mountains, flat land remains only as thin strips on the valley floors, and into those narrow floors were packed the pit mouths, tracks, and plants, and onto the slopes on both sides the homes of the people who worked there. This frame captures a section where the valley runs diagonally from the lower left to the upper right. The aerial photographs that survive are those of 1961-69 and 1974-78, and if you lay today's photograph over them, you can read the order in which the rows of housing that filled the mountain slopes faded and returned to forest.

A coal capital that began from an outcrop

According to the history compiled in a plan of the City of Yubari, the beginning was in 1888. Saka Ichitaro, an engineer of the Hokkaido Government, found a large outcrop of the Yubari Coalfield. In 1891 the Hokkaido Colliery and Railway Company opened the Yubari No. 1 Mine, and the following year a railway linking Oiwake and Yubari opened. The town swelled as a base for sending high-quality coal out to the rest of the country, and it adopted city status in 1943. The city's materials record that at its peak in 1960 there were more than 17 coal mines, producing 4 million tons a year. The 107,972 people counted in the national census of the same year, 1960, are the peak of this city's population.

The landform decided the shape of the town. More than 90% of the city's area is forest and wild land, and the places where people live extend in bands along the river and its tributaries. If the tracks and facilities take up the valley floor, the only option for homes is to cut steps into the slopes above and line them up there. The left side and lower right of the frame are ridges covered by forest, and from there the slopes fall to the valley floor at the center. The homes stood on the upper half of the slopes, which opens on the north side of the valley, and on the shoulder toward the right.

Lines of row houses filling the slopes

In the 1961-69 photograph, the slopes on both sides of the valley are covered with small roofs of the same shape. In the upper half of the frame, short row houses stand in dozens of parallel rows, as if following the contour lines, and climb up to near the shoulders of the ridges. At the center of the frame there is a small hill thick with dark growth, and the rows of houses wrap around its foot. Only the top of the small hill is left as forest, and housing surrounds it. In the middle on the right, too, gridded housing spreads together over a gentle slope. On the valley floor many tracks run diagonally in a bundle, and a road and the river keep close to them. The mountain on the left is dense forest, another thin valley runs down through it, and in the lower left corner it joins a town area packed with rows of houses. In the middle of the right edge, a whitish slope with no trees shows. At the bottom center of the frame, a little above the valley floor, there is a square, open, bright flat area, and several fairly large buildings stand beside it. The amount of housing lined up on the slopes is far greater than that of the town area on the valley floor.

By 1974-78, many of the lines of row houses that lined the upper half of the slopes have disappeared. The mountains are a mottled mix of the brown of autumn leaves and the dark green of evergreens. The places where roofs stood have become pale yellow-green grassland, and only the lines of the stepped lots remain faintly. The rows of houses that went around the foot of the small hill at the center are broken too, and they have begun to be covered with grass and young trees. The remaining homes are gathered at the upper right and the middle on the right, and there buildings longer than in the previous era line up facing the same way. On the valley floor, buildings with red roofs gather beside the tracks, and to the south of them a wide, dark gray area of ground opens up. In the middle of the right edge, a gray cone-shaped mound with radiating streaks spreads its base. The town area at the lower left is as packed with rows of houses as in the previous era, with blue and white roofs mixed in. From the middle on the left a single road runs down along the thin valley, small roofs continue here and there along it, and it connects to the town area at the lower left.

The forest that returned after the mines closed

The city's materials write that from 1961 on, coal mines closed one after another because of the shift in energy, and from 1973 on, major mines including the Hokutan Yubari Coal Mine also closed. The 1974-78 photographs were taken during that period of continuing closures. In October 1987 the Hokutan Mayachi Coal Mine closed, and on March 27, 1990, the last mine, the Mitsubishi Minami-Oyubari Coal Mine, closed, and the industry of mining coal disappeared from the city. The census population fell to 31,665 by 1985, and in the Basic Resident Register it was 7,744 at the end of March 2020. On April 1, 2019, the JR Sekisho Line between Shin-Yubari Station and Yubari Station was abolished, and the nearest station became Shin-Yubari Station, far to the south.

As a new pillar in place of coal, the city staked its future on tourism. It built facilities such as the "Coal History Village" on former mine sites and held a series of events such as film festivals. However, the costs of dealing with the aftermath of the closures and the investment in tourism piled up and the deficit swelled, and in June 2006 the city announced that it was giving up on rebuilding its finances on its own. From fiscal 2007, efforts under a financial rebuilding plan based on law began. The population began to fall faster from this period, and the process by which signs of people vanished from the valley slopes did not end with the single event of the mine closures.

The forest covers almost the whole of the slopes, and in today's photograph hardly any roofs can be seen even on the upper half, where lines of row houses stood in 1961-69. Still, horizontal streaks float up faintly in the way the tree heights line up, passing on the traces of the lots cut into steps. The slopes people left were covered with trees in about half a century. A diagonal road passes along the valley floor, and beside it buildings with red and white roofs stand here and there. At the upper right there is a road that climbs the slope while doubling back. Where the cone-shaped mound spread its base in the middle of the right edge, gray bare soil remains, and a road winds through it. The ground that was dark gray at the bottom center of the frame is also still gray bare ground, surrounded by forest.

The town area at the lower left has far fewer buildings, but the way its roads bend is the same as in the two eras. The directions of the road and the river on the valley floor also trace the same diagonal line as the bundle of tracks in 1961-69. Only the framework of the town decided by the landform remains, and the layer of homes that sat on it has peeled away. The size of the coal mining town was carved not on the valley floor but on the side of the slopes.