Bihoro 美幌町

• The town's version: the name comes from the Ainu pi-poro (ピ・ポロ). The town translates it as "much water, a great place" (水多く・大いなる所), a place where many clear streams meet. The name was written in katakana (ビホロ) until May 1875 (Meiji 8), when the kanji 美幌 became standard¹. The Britannica Japan entry gives the same meaning¹⁷.
• Two theories: Japanese Wikipedia says the meaning is hard to pin down. It lists piporo, "many stones," and pehoro, "much water"¹¹. In Ainu, pi means a pebble and pe means water.
• Why "water" fits: about 60 rivers flow through the town. The Bihoro River (美幌川), which rises at Bihoro Pass, is called its "mother river"¹.
• Other Ainu names: six villages were created in 1872 with katakana names: Bihoro, Kenetanpe (ケネタンペ), Huremem (フレメム), Kakkumi (カックミ), Tatsukofu (タツコフ) and Ponkikin (ポンキキン). In 1875 they were given kanji: 美幌, 杵端辺, 古梅, 活汲, 達媚 and 翻木禽¹¹. Furuume (古梅), from Huremem, is still the address of the pass-top roadside station¹⁸.
• An asteroid: asteroid (4460) Bihoro is named after the town. Endate Kin (円舘金), an amateur astronomer living in Bihoro, discovered it on 28 February 1990¹¹.

• Prehistory: about 130 archaeological sites are known in Bihoro. The oldest go back more than 10,000 years, to the Paleolithic¹⁹. A Middle Jōmon pebble painted in black pigment with a circle and six radiating lines was found at the Midori site (みどり遺跡) in 1986. It is a town-designated cultural property²⁰. Excavations at sites in the Motomachi (元町) district have yielded finds from the Paleolithic to the Satsumon period, now in the museum's collection²¹.
• Ainu era: the land along the Bihoro River is called the town's birthplace, and traces of its earlier inhabitants remain along the river¹. Ainu chiefs led the area into the early 20th century (see Ainu heritage)²².
• 1858: the explorer Matsuura Takeshirō (松浦武四郎) visited Bihoro during his survey of Ezo¹⁹. A monument marks the place where he camped²⁰.
• 1872–1881: the six Ainu-named villages were created in 1872 and given kanji in 1875. In 1881 the district was moved to Kitami Province¹¹.
• 1883: a government relief office for the Ainu (山網走旧土人救済事務所) opened in Katsukumi Village. "Kyūdojin" (旧土人) was the official term for the Ainu at the time¹¹.
• 1887: in July the relief office became a village-chief office. It soon moved to Bihoro Village¹¹. The town counts this as its founding¹.
• Settlement: after the office opened, more people moved in from Honshu¹⁹. Settlement along the Abashiri River grew from 1898¹⁷. The sources consulted did not say which prefectures the settlers came from. No record of tondenhei (militia-farmer) settlement was found.
• 1912: Bihoro Station opened on 5 October, on the new line to Abashiri²³.
• 1915–1923: the six villages merged as Bihoro Village on 1 April 1915. Three of them split off as Tsubetsu Village in 1919, the road over Bihoro Pass opened in 1920, and part of Tsubetsu Village was annexed back in 1921¹¹. Bihoro became a town on 1 April 1923⁸.
• 1924–1925: the Aioi Line (相生線) opened from Bihoro to Tsubetsu on 17 November 1924 and reached Kitami-Aioi (北見相生) on 15 November 1925: 36.8 km with 14 stations and stops²⁴.
• 1934: the Akan area, including Bihoro Pass, became a national park⁸.
• Early industry: historic-site markers recall a government relay inn (美幌駅逓) and a flax mill (美幌亜麻工場)²⁰.
• 1938–1945, the naval air base:
  • Building: work on a naval air base began in the Tanaka district in 1938¹¹. The airfield was finished in 1940⁵.
  • Bihoro Naval Air Group: the group was formed at Kisarazu on 1 October 1940. On 10 December 1941 it helped sink the British battleships Prince of Wales and Repulse off Malaya²⁵.
  • Second airfield: it later became the first Memanbetsu Airport²⁵.
• 1940: Bihoro was the first town or village in Hokkaido to be designated a city-planning area¹.
• 1946: the Takano district of Memanbetsu Village joined Bihoro on 30 September¹¹.
• 1951: the National Police Reserve moved onto the former air base. It became a GSDF camp in 1954⁵.
• 1959: Nippon Beet Sugar's Bihoro factory started work. On 27 January that year, a fire at the Gin'ei-za cinema (銀映座) killed 12 of about 600 people in the audience¹¹.
• 1970: the Bihoro warm-water reservoir was built to warm river water before it reached the rice fields²⁶.
• 1985: the Aioi Line closed on 1 April²⁴.
• 1987: the 100th anniversary of the founding. The Bihoro Museum opened, and the first Bihoro 100 km biathlon was held⁸.
• 1997: Bihoro signed a sister-city agreement with Cambridge, New Zealand, during its 110th-anniversary events⁸.
• 2002: the Bihoro Pass roadside station was registered on 13 August¹⁸.
• 2021: the new town hall opened. It was the first town hall in Hokkaido built as a ZEB (net-zero energy building)⁸.
• 2022: the rest house at the pass reopened after a renovation on 21 February²⁷.
• 2023: Bihoro marked 100 years as a town on 1 April. Working Space KITEN opened as a base for people thinking of moving to the town⁸.
• 2024: the Kussharo Caldera Trail opened in October¹⁴.
• 2025: Bihoro recorded its highest-ever temperature, 38.3 °C, on 24 July²⁸.
• 2026: the restaurant at the pass reopened as Tenkaichi Shokudō (天下一食堂) on 20 April¹⁸. Green Village Bihoro and the campground at Midori-no-Mura closed for renovation, planned to run from April 2026 to March 2027²⁹.

• Location: Bihoro lies inland, roughly midway between Kitami and Abashiri¹¹, about 30 km from the Sea of Okhotsk¹. Memanbetsu Airport, in neighboring Ozora, is close by¹¹.
• Rivers:
  • Abashiri River (網走川): the main river of the valley¹¹.
  • Bihoro River (美幌川): rises at Bihoro Pass. About 60 rivers and streams flow through the town in all¹.
• Kussharo caldera: the southeast of the town climbs to the western rim of the Kussharo caldera, which measures 29 km east to west and 20 km north to south. Bihoro Pass sits on the border with Teshikaga¹². The caldera formed in repeated eruptions between about 300,000 and 7,000 years ago¹⁹. Mt. Mokoto (藻琴山, 1,000 m) and Tsubetsu Pass (947 m) are on the same rim¹⁴. The pass is inside Akan-Mashu National Park (阿寒摩周国立公園)¹⁵.
• Land use: the town has 10,700 ha of farmland. Almost all of it (10,600 ha) is upland fields, with 65 ha of paddy. Forest covers 26,580 ha³⁰.
• Water:
  • Furuume Dam (古梅ダム): a 48 m rockfill irrigation dam holding 3.5 million m³. Sources differ on its dates: the Japan Dam Foundation lists the project as 1972–1996³¹, while Japanese Wikipedia dates the start of main works to 1978 and completion to 1988¹¹. It supplies irrigation water to more than 3,000 ha of farmland in Bihoro and Ozora³².
  • Warm-water reservoir (美幌温水ため池): built in 1970. At 93,976 m², it is the largest reservoir by area in Hokkaido, and more than 40 kinds of dragonfly live there²⁶. It is one of Japan's "100 selected irrigation ponds" (ため池百選), and it is no longer used for irrigation³².
• Climate (JMA Bihoro station, 60 m, 1991–2020 normals):
  • Temperature: the yearly mean is 5.8 °C, with −8.3 °C in January and 19.6 °C in August. The mean daily maximum is 11.6 °C and the mean daily minimum is 0.1 °C³³.
  • Rain and sun: 778.6 mm of precipitation and 1,807.8 hours of sunshine a year³³.
  • Snow: JMA gives no snow normals for this station³³. Bihoro is a designated heavy-snow area, and winter lows of around −25 °C are not unusual in the hills¹¹.
• Records: the highest temperature is 38.3 °C (24 July 2025). The lowest is −31.2 °C (17 February 1978). The heaviest daily rain is 144.0 mm (8 October 2015)²⁸. English Wikipedia's climate table gives 38.2 °C⁷, which JMA lists as the reading of the day before, 23 July 2025²⁸.

• Farm output: MAFF estimates Bihoro's 2024 farm output at ¥14.95 billion³⁰. By sector:
  • Vegetables: ¥6.90 billion.
  • Beef cattle: ¥2.35 billion.
  • Industrial crops (mainly sugar beet): ¥1.82 billion.
  • Potatoes: ¥1.64 billion.
  • Dairy: ¥1.00 billion.
  • Wheat: ¥0.81 billion.
  • Beans: ¥0.37 billion.
  • Rice: ¥0.04 billion.
• Harvests (2025): wheat 16,700 t from 3,210 ha, 2.5% of Hokkaido's crop. Sugar beet 124,500 t from 1,900 ha. Soybeans 2,230 t from 682 ha³⁰.
• Farms and livestock: the 2020 Census of Agriculture counted 366 farm businesses and 116 forestry businesses. There were 7,697 beef cattle on 26 farms and 1,552 dairy cattle on 17 farms³⁰. The town's own figures show 763 farm households in 1989 and 393 in 2015. In 2015 its output of ¥12.21 billion ranked 25th of Hokkaido's 179 municipalities³.
• Signature crops: JA Bihoro says the Sassy (サッシー) potato is grown nowhere else in Hokkaido. It also grows asparagus, ending the year with the winter greenhouse crop "Fuyuhime" (冬姫), and carrots on well-drained volcanic-ash soil¹⁶.
• JA Bihoro (JAびほろ): founded on 11 April 1948. It had 1,799 members in 307 member households on 31 January 2026. Its affiliates include a regional farm-processing federation and Cradle Foods (クレードル食品)³². Japanese Wikipedia says the processing federation, Bihoro Nōkōren (ビホロ農工連), made more potato starch than anyone else in Japan as of April 2009¹¹.
• Sugar: Nippon Beet Sugar's Bihoro factory (美幌製糖所, Toriri 91) is one of the company's three factories. The others are in Memuro and Shibetsu⁴.
• Defense: JGSDF Camp Bihoro is home to the 6th Rapid Deployment Regiment⁵.
• Forestry: the town's forests gained FSC certification in 2005¹¹.
• Tourism: the Hokkaido Government counted 759,200 visitors in fiscal 2025, up 23.4% from 615,100 in fiscal 2024³⁴.
  • Day trips: 740,200 visitors came for the day and only 19,000 stayed overnight³⁴.
  • From outside Hokkaido: 76,000 visitors³⁴.
  • Busiest month: August, with 116,100 visitors³⁴.
  • The pass: the roadside station reports about 600,000 visitors a year on its own count¹⁵.
• Population and revitalization: the population fell about 11% between the 2020 Census and August 2026 (calculated)⁶. Recent efforts include:
  • Working Space KITEN: opened in 2023 as a coworking space and a base for people thinking of moving to Bihoro⁸.
  • Kussharo Caldera Trail: opened in October 2024¹⁴.
  • Rail fare subsidy: a ¥3,000 JR fare subsidy for residents, to promote the Sekihoku Line³⁵.
  • Student exchange: the town pays about 70% of the cost of a high-school exchange with Cambridge, New Zealand³⁶.

Where to shop:

• Poppoya (物産館ぽっぽ屋): the tourism association's shop inside JR Bihoro Station. It sells fresh produce from local farms, products with the Bihoro brand certification, processed foods and woodcraft¹⁴. Open 9:00–17:00. Closed on the last day of each month and over the New Year⁴¹.
• Okhotsk Terroir shop (オホーツク・テロワールの店): about 300 Okhotsk farm, fish and processed products, inside the Co-op Sapporo store at Mitsuhashi Minami 3-1¹⁴.
• Bee Star (ビースター): JA Bihoro's vegetable stand, open from May to October³².
• Online: most of the products above are on Bihoro's furusato-nozei site³⁸.

• Bihoro Museum (美幌博物館): opened in 1987 for the 100th anniversary. It covers the town's history, nature and art. The two-storey building has 2,641.6 m² of floor space, 1,377.8 m² of it for exhibitions, and an observation tower⁴⁶.
  • Room 1: archaeology, an Ainu house and pioneer life¹⁹.
  • Room 2: farming and nature. The first tractor reached Bihoro in 1952. It could plough 23 ha a day; a horse managed about 0.5 ha²⁶.
  • Room 3: art. The museum holds about 2,600 works by artists linked to Bihoro and the Okhotsk region⁴⁷.
  • Diorama: a recreated Okhotsk forest, one of the largest dioramas in Hokkaido¹⁴.
  • Special exhibitions: "Earth of Living Things" (生き物たちの地球) runs from 21 March to 23 November 2026. A pottery show by Nakamura Yutaka (中村裕) runs in the lobby from 1 October 2026 to 31 January 2027⁴⁸.
• Bihoro Shrine (美幌神社): founded in the early Meiji era, it is the town's main place of prayer for safety and good harvests¹⁴.
• Town song: the words are by Ōshita Kōichi (大下孝一) and the music by the composer Takemitsu Tōru (武満徹)¹¹.
• Protected nature: an oak (かしわ) at Bihoro Elementary School, thought to be more than 200 years old, and a wild colony of the pink mountain peony Paeonia obovata (ベニバナヤマシャクヤク) are town cultural properties²⁰.
• Public art: in Seseragi Park (せせらぎ公園), the "Soft Stone Art Road" displays sculptures made from Bihoro and Sapporo soft stone. They were carved for the Bihoro International Art Festival for Children, 1998–2000¹⁴.

• Place names: "Bihoro" and the Meiji village names (Huremem, Kakkumi, Ponkikin and others) all come from Ainu¹¹¹.
• Chiefs and language: Kikuchi Ginosuke (菊地儀之助, 1877?–1961; 1881 in the family register) was born at Kubitai (クビタイ), between today's Fukuzumi and Tobashi districts of Bihoro²².
  • Family: his grandfather, Wintok (ウィントク), was a chief whose authority reached Kushiro, Shiranuka, Ashoro, Nemuro, Akan and Bihoro. His father, Ikakureka (died 1925), succeeded Wintok as chief of Bihoro, and his uncle Itakyo (イタㇰヨ) later succeeded Ikakureka²².
  • Language: Kikuchi was the last fluent speaker of the Bihoro dialect of Ainu. He worked with many researchers and helped compile the Ainu Dialect Dictionary (アイヌ語方言辞典)²².
• Meiji policy: the town's administration began with a government relief office for the Ainu, opened at Katsukumi in 1883 and turned into the village-chief office in 1887¹¹.
• Museum: Room 1 of the Bihoro Museum lets you look inside a chise (チセ), a traditional Ainu house. Nets for urai (ウライ), a river weir used for fishing, lie on its earthen floor¹⁹. The museum also shows work by the woodcarver Fujito Takeki (藤戸竹喜)¹⁴.
• Food: when the pass rest house reopened in 2022, one of its restaurants, Umizora no Haru (海空のハル), served traditional Ainu cooking²⁷. The restaurant has since become Tenkaichi Shokudō¹⁸.
• Chashi: Rinnai Chashi (リンナイチャシ), an Ainu hilltop enclosure, is listed among the town's sights¹¹. Details and access were not found.
• Ceremony: Japanese Wikipedia says an Ainu kamuy-nomi (カムイノミ, prayer ceremony) is performed at the Bihoro Pass Festival each May¹². The town's own event pages consulted do not describe it.
• Not found: the sources consulted did not show an Ainu cultural center in Bihoro.

• Cambridge, Waipa District, New Zealand: sister city since 12 October 1997, signed during the town's 110th-anniversary events⁸¹¹. Each summer Bihoro sends high-school students to Cambridge High School for about three weeks, with homestays. The town pays about 70% of the cost. Since fiscal 2024, students at high schools outside the town can also apply³⁶.
• Yūsui, Kagoshima Prefecture (鹿児島県湧水町): Japanese Wikipedia describes exchanges between the two towns through sky sports¹¹. No formal agreement or date was found.

• Kitanofuji Katsuaki (北の富士勝昭, 1942–2024): the 52nd yokozuna. He was born in Bihoro, and his official hometown is Asahikawa, where he finished junior high school. Japanese Wikipedia says, in an unsourced passage, that he moved to Rumoi at six. He later trained the yokozuna Chiyonofuji and Hokutoumi. After leaving the Japan Sumo Association in 1998 he was an NHK sumo commentator until illness kept him off air from March 2023⁶⁰.
• Kikuchi Ginosuke (菊地儀之助, 1877?–1961): an Ainu culture bearer and the last fluent speaker of the Bihoro dialect²².
• Komura Hiro (古村比呂): actress, born in Bihoro; Japanese Wikipedia lists her among people linked to the town¹¹.
• Yamaguchi Masao (山口昌男): cultural anthropologist and former president of Sapporo University¹¹.
• Ishida Masako (石田正子): cross-country skier¹¹.
• Ichinohe Seitarō (一戸誠太郎): speed skater at the PyeongChang and Beijing Olympics¹¹.
• Kubo Kōzō (久保恒造): Para Nordic skier¹¹.