Horokanai 幌加内町

• Horokanai: the name comes from the Ainu horka-nay (ホㇿカナイ), "the river that turns back." It originally meant the Horokanai River, which flows through the south of the town⁵. Japanese Wikipedia explains that the river runs the opposite way to the main stream of the Uryu River, into which it flows⁷²⁰.
• Shumarinai (朱鞠内): the name has several competing Ainu readings²¹:
  • sumari-nay, "fox river," proposed by Nagata Hōsei (永田方正). The town history and JNR's 1973 guide to station names follow this reading.
  • suma-us-pet, "river with many stones," recorded by Matsuura Takeshirō (松浦武四郎).
  • suma-ri-nay, "river of high rocks," proposed by Yamada Shūzō (山田秀三). The Hokkaido Government Ainu policy office's place-name list calls this reading grammatically doubtful.
• Numaushi (沼牛): Yamada traced it to numa-us-horkanay, "the Horokanai [tributary] with hair-like water plants." Other theories point to walnut trees or to nup, "field"²².
• Uryu (雨竜), the district and main river: readings include urir-o-pet, "river where cormorants gather," and orir-o-pet, "river where waves rise"²³.

• Ainu era: Ainu place names line the Uryu valley (see above). The sources consulted document no archaeological sites or kotan (villages) inside the town.
• 1890–1898, first settlers: the village headman's office (戸長役場) set up at Shintotsukawa in June 1890 took charge of both banks of the Uryu River. The area later passed to the offices of Uryu and Hokuryu villages⁴. In 1897 settlers leased undeveloped state land and made their way up the Uryu River from Takadomari (鷹泊) to break the first ground³; four settlers arrived that August⁴. Settlement of surveyed colonial lots began in 1898⁴. The prefectures the settlers came from are not recorded in the sources consulted.
• Farming takes root: trial rice planting began in the south around 1900. Paddies grew from 65 ha in 1918 to 1,046 ha in 1931 and about 2,100 ha in the 1955–64 period. Beans, mint and pyrethrum were cash crops for a time, before potatoes became the main field crop⁴.
• 1918–1959, village to town: Horokanai split from Kamihokuryu Village in April 1918 and became a second-class village in 1923. It became an ordinary village in 1946 and a town in September 1959⁴.
• Railway: the line from Fukagawa reached Horokanai on 8 November 1929, Soeushinai (添牛内) in 1931 and Shumarinai in 1932¹⁷. The section south from Nayoro (the Meiu Line, 名雨線) was built from 1935 to 1939¹⁶. The route was completed on 10 October 1941 and renamed the Shinmei Line¹⁷.
• The dam and forced labor:
  • Oji Paper set up Uryu Electric Power in 1928 to dam the upper Uryu. The state-run Japan Electric Generation and Transmission Company later took over the work, and Hokkaido Electric Power has run the dam since 1951²⁴.
  • The Uryu No. 1 Dam, 45.5 m high, was built from 1938 to 1943 (Wikipedia's dam data give 1939 as the start) and feeds the 51,000 kW Uryu Power Station²⁴¹⁶.
  • The work relied on takobeya bonded labor. From about 1940, about 3,000 Korean workers were forcibly mobilized. More than 200 deaths have been confirmed over about ten years, including more than 40 Koreans¹⁶.
• 1934–2024, the temple museum: a Shinshū Ōtani-ha (真宗大谷派) preaching hall built in Shumarinai in 1934, later Kōken-ji (光顕寺), opened as the Sasa no Bohyo Exhibition Hall in 1995²⁵. The temple collapsed under snow in the winter of 2020²⁵. After rebuilding, it reopened as the Sasa no Bohyo Forced Labor Museum on 28 September 2024¹⁵.
• Postwar peak and decline: the population stood at 12,107 in 1955 and 12,016 in 1960⁴. It began to fall around the time the town was created in 1959, as farmers left the harsh climate for the cities. The rice-production cuts from 1970 hit the northern farms especially hard⁴.
• Buckwheat and superlatives:
  • Buckwheat spread as a replacement crop for rice. In 1980, at 354 ha, Horokanai became Japan's largest buckwheat grower by area⁴.
  • Lake Shumarinai became a prefectural natural park in 1974¹¹, and Moshiri recorded −41.2 °C in 1978¹.
  • An agricultural processing research center opened in 1989 to develop soba products⁴.
  • The first New Soba Festival was held on 31 July 1994¹⁴.
• 1995, the railway closes: the Shinmei Line ran its last trains on 3 September 1995 and was formally abolished the next day. By then it carried very few passengers. JR Hokkaido's own bus replaced it¹⁷.
• 1997–2017:
  • Work on the town's own buckwheat variety, Horominori, began in 1997; it was registered in 2004²⁶. The Michi-no-Eki was registered on 17 April 1998²⁷.
  • The town moved to Kamikawa Subprefecture in April 2010³. The 1,241 m Horokanai Tunnel on Route 275 was completed the same year²⁸.
  • Volunteers restored Numaushi Station in 2016²². A paid passenger service to central Asahikawa started in October 2017⁴.
• 2020s:
  • On 14 May 2023 a brown bear killed a 54-year-old angler on the shore of Lake Shumarinai¹¹. Visitor numbers fell, and the town brought in lake rules and electric fences⁴.
  • The 30th and final New Soba Festival drew 80,000 people on 29–31 August 2025¹⁴.
  • New country signs, chosen through an open public call in 2025, went up at four sites on national routes in 2026. Five more on prefectural roads are due in FY2027²⁹.

• Setting: Horokanai lies at the western edge of Kamikawa Subprefecture. It is a narrow strip about 63 km long, closed in by mountains on every side⁴⁷. The highest peaks are Mount Pissiri (ピッシリ山, 1,031.5 m) and Mount Santō (三頭山, 1,009.1 m)⁷. Santō is one of the "100 Famous Mountains of Hokkaido"³⁰.
• Rivers and townsites: the Uryu River rises on Mount Pissiri and flows south through the whole town, gathering more than 17 tributaries. It is a major tributary of the Ishikari River⁴, and 155 km long²³. Four small basins along it hold the town's four townsites: Shumarinai, Soeushinai, Seiwa and Horokanai⁴. The south suits paddy rice. The narrower north, colder, is given to field crops and dairy⁴.
• Forests: about 80% of the town is forest⁴:
  • The east is mostly Hokkaido University's Uryu Experimental Forest (雨龍研究林). It covers about 25,000 ha and is run from Moshiri. It holds natural mixed forest of conifers and broadleaf trees, including stands of Sakhalin spruce³¹.
  • The west is national forest⁴.
• Lake Shumarinai: the lake lies at 282 m above sea level. Its surface covers 23.73 km² and it is 40 km around¹¹. The water is about 40 m deep and holds 13 islands¹. The tourism association likens its indented shoreline to a Nordic fjord¹².
• Parks: Shumarinai Prefectural Natural Park (朱鞠内道立自然公園), designated in 1974¹¹. No national or quasi-national park lies in the town.
• Climate: the climate is inland, with hot, humid summers and bitterly cold, snowy winters. The day–night temperature range is wide. Frost can come as early as late September and as late as June⁴.
  • Snow lies from early November to late April. It can be more than 3 m deep, and the record is 324 cm (2018)⁴.
  • JMA normals for 1991–2020 at Horokanai: annual mean 5.8 °C, January −8.4 °C, August 20.0 °C, precipitation 1,503.7 mm, snowfall 1,232 cm⁷.
  • At Shumarinai the annual mean is 4.7 °C and snowfall 1,247 cm⁷.
  • Station records at Horokanai are 37.3 °C (28 July 2021) and −37.6 °C (17 February 1978). The −41.2 °C reading was taken at Moshiri⁷¹.
  • The town is a special heavy-snow area (特別豪雪地帯)⁷. When conditions are right, diamond dust (ice crystals glittering in the air) can be seen at Shumarinai in winter¹¹.

• Farming:
  • The 2025 Census of Agriculture counted 87 farms: 75 family-run and 12 run by companies or groups. That is 19 fewer than in 2020, while the average farm grew from 39.8 ha to 44.7 ha⁴.
  • The south grows rice and field crops; the north grows field crops and keeps livestock⁴.
  • About 75% of farms have a successor, but in 2020 more than half of all farmers were 65 or older⁴.
• Soba industry:
  • Buckwheat is the main crop, at about 3,300 ha⁴. Growers sow in June, the crop flowers in late July and early August, and the harvest starts in early September. The harvest date is set by the share of seeds that have turned black³².
  • Processing facilities include the Soba Nippon-ichi no Yakata (そば日本一の館, 2000), Nippon-ichi no Soba no Gajō (日本一のそばの牙城, 2012) and Soba no Mi Kōbō (そばの実工房, 2013). A warehouse cooled with stored snow (2014) keeps the grain fresh³².
  • The town's own variety, Horominori (ほろみのり), was bred by the town's agricultural technology center. It flowers and ripens evenly, yields about 1.3 times more and is grown on about 130 ha²⁶.
  • The third-sector company Horokanai Shinkō Kōsha (ほろかない振興公社) makes dried noodles and other soba products⁴.
• Forestry: about 90% of the forest is publicly owned, and plantation covers only 7%. The many sawmills of the past have shrunk to one company with one plant, which mainly makes wood chips⁴.
• Lake fishery: the Shumarinai Lake Freshwater Fisheries Cooperative (朱鞠内湖淡水漁業協同組合) hatches and releases itou and wakasagi. A processed wakasagi product was selected as a "Hokkaido High-Grade Food 2013" (北のハイグレード食品2013)⁴.
• Commerce and finance:
  • Retail sales were ¥1.51 billion in 2021⁴. Town revenue was ¥4.41 billion in FY2023, of which local taxes made up just 4.0%; the fiscal strength index was 0.10⁴.
  • Japanese Wikipedia notes that a plot in Shumarinai was the cheapest residential land in Japan in the 2005 prefectural land-price survey⁷.
• Tourism:
  • Before the pandemic the town drew about 200,000 visitors a year. The number fell to about 160,000 in FY2020–21 and was hit again by the 2023 bear attack, before recovering to about 200,000 in FY2024 (town figures)⁴.
  • Hokkaido Government survey figures differ. They give 150,500 visitors for FY2024 and 211,900 for FY2025, when the final soba festival was held. Of the FY2025 visitors, 94,000 came in September alone, and only 6,700 stayed overnight³³.
  • About 70% of visitors come in summer, mostly on day trips from within Hokkaido⁴. Seiwa Onsen Ruonto and the Michi-no-Eki together draw about 40,000 day visitors a year⁴.
• Population:
  • The population fell 88.6% between 1960 and 2020, from 12,016 to 1,370⁴.
  • In 2020, 40.8% of residents were 65 or older and 8.8% were under 15⁴.
  • Of the 723 people in work in 2020, 31.4% worked in primary industry, 10.6% in secondary and 58.0% in services⁴.
  • The FY2026–30 plan aims to hold the population at 1,095 in 2030⁴.
• Revitalization:
  • The town-run Horokanai High School (北海道幌加内高等学校) opened in December 1954 and runs a part-time (定時制) agriculture course³⁴³⁵. It is all-boarding with a quota of 40 students (定員40名). Soba-making is a required subject, and many students come from outside the town⁴. In April 2020 it was selected for the national "Chiiki Mirai Ryūgaku 365" (地域みらい留学365) program, which recruits students from other regions³⁴. The school says its teams have won the team event of the National High School Soba-Making Championship (held since 2011) seven times, more than any other school³⁶.
  • Other efforts include the satellite offices, trials of buckwheat-husk bio-coke as fuel, and the large Uryu Dam renewal project (雨竜ダム再生事業), which is expected to bring in workers⁴.

• Past events: the first soba festival, held around Seiwa Elementary School on 31 July 1994, drew 5,300 people. Over the years, the festival's "National Local Soba Plaza" (全国ご当地そば自慢広場) hosted stalls from famous soba areas such as Fukui, the former Yamato town in Fukushima and the former Kanasagō town in Ibaraki¹⁴. Wikipedia lists a Shumarinai Lake Water Festival (朱鞠内湖湖水祭り) in early August⁷. The town's calendar says Shumarinight replaced it from 2025⁴⁶.
• Performing arts: Shumarinai Taiko (朱鞠内太鼓) drumming is the town's main folk performing art. The town's cultural federation has nine member groups⁴.
• Museums and memorials:
  • The JR Shinmei Line Museum (ＪＲ深名線資料館) opened in 1998 on the second floor of the Kōryū Plaza (交流プラザ), near the site of the former Horokanai Station. It shows tickets and railway items, including hard tickets and postcards from the last day of service¹⁸²⁰.
  • The Sasa no Bohyo Forced Labor Museum is in Shumarinai¹⁵.
  • Moshiri Crystal Park has exhibits on temperature records⁴⁷.

Little Ainu history specific to Horokanai is documented in the sources consulted. There is no Ainu cultural facility in the town, and no archaeological site or kotan is recorded. The Ainu presence survives mainly in place names: Horokanai, Shumarinai, Numaushi and the Uryu River itself (see Name origin)^5212223. The Sasa no Bohyo Forced Labor Museum places the town's history in the wider story of Ainu Mosir, the Ainu homeland. Its exhibits cover Matsumae-domain exploitation and Meiji-era assimilation policy alongside the dam-era forced labor⁴⁹.

• Setouchi (瀬戸内市), Okayama Prefecture: a domestic sister town. The partnership was signed with the former Ushimado Town (牛窓町) in July 1989 and has continued since Ushimado merged into Setouchi in 2004⁷⁰⁷.
• Regional partnership: in September 2011 the town joined the Northern Hokkaido Central Area settlement and self-reliance zone (北北海道中央圏域定住自立圏), centered on Nayoro and Shibetsu⁴. This is a regional pact, not a sister-city tie.
• No international sister cities were found.

• Yamashita Takafumi (山下貴史, b. 1952): born in Rumoi and raised in Horokanai. He was a member of the House of Representatives from 2003 to 2005 and mayor of Fukagawa from 2007 to 2023⁷¹.
• Sakazume Katsuhiko (坂詰克彦): a member of the rock band Dohatsuten (怒髪天). Japanese Wikipedia lists him among people from Horokanai⁷.