Horonobe 幌延町

The name is from Ainu, but its exact source is uncertain. The Hokkaido Government's Ainu place-name list rates it at confidence level C, the lowest on its A–C scale, and gives two readings:²⁸

• Poro-nup (ポロヌプ), "big plain." This is the traditional reading, and the town uses it: poro ("big") and nup ("plain").¹³²⁹ The list notes that Meiji-era maps put the name Poronup at an obscure spot where the Teshio River turns behind the beach.²⁸
• Poro-nutap (ポロヌタプ), "big bend of a river." The explorer Matsuura Takeshirō (松浦武四郎) wrote the name as Horonotafu (ホロノタフ) in his 1857 journal (『丁巳日誌』). An 1887 map shows that it named a place just south of today's town center, where the Sarobetsu River once made a large bend.²⁸

The list also says the villages of Horonobe and Saru had no residents when they were created in 1878. Matsuura's map shows Horonufu (ホロヌフ) and Shiyaroro (シヤロロ) on the coast, which may be where the two village names came from.²⁸ The name was first read "Horonobu" (ほろのぶ). It changed to "Horonobe" after the railway station opened in 1925.⁶

• Before 1868: Little archaeology has been published for Horonobe, but the local museum displays prehistoric artifacts.³⁰ A trading post (場所) for trade with the Teshio Ainu stood at the mouth of the Teshio River, in present-day Teshio.³¹ The explorer Matsuura Takeshirō recorded local place names in 1857.²⁸
• 1878–1919: The villages of Horonobe and Saru were created in 1878, at first with no residents.⁶²⁸ They separated from Teshio in 1909, when a village office (戸長役場) opened at Ōmagari (大曲, now Motomachi).³¹⁶ In 1919 the two were combined as Horonobe Village.⁶
• 1899–1931, settlers: In 1899, fifteen households from Fukui Prefecture settled on the Lower Sarobetsu plain (下サロベツ原野), and the town counts this as its founding year. Farms run by Hongan-ji (本願寺) and the Hokke sect (法華宗), and the Teshio farm (天塩農場), were set up the same year.⁶³² In 1900, ninety tenant households (357 people) came to the Hokke-sect farm. More groups followed from Aichi (1907), Iwate (1910) and Pippu in Kamikawa (1931).³²
• 1923–1926, the railway: The line now called the Soya Main Line reached Toikanbetsu (問寒別) in 1923 and Horonobe on 20 July 1925. It was extended north in 1926.⁶³³
• 1925–1969, the turn to dairy: Frost and floods ruined crops again and again. Ten cattle were brought from Iwate in 1925, and the first dairy cows were kept at Toikanbetsu in 1927. The dairy federation (酪連) that later became Snow Brand opened its Horonobe plant in 1938,³² on 11 December according to Wikipedia.⁶ A government cattle-lending program from 1951 sped up the shift to dairy.¹³ The town had 1,000 dairy cows by 1958 and 5,000 by 1969.³²
• 1940: The Saru area and the land north of it split off as Toyotomi Village.⁶ On 2 August, a tsunami from the Shakotan Peninsula offshore earthquake washed away fishing huts at Otonrui (オトンルイ), across the river from Teshio town, and 11 people died.³¹
• 1960–1974: Horonobe became a town on 1 September 1960.⁶ The Sarobetsu Plain had been a quasi-national park since 1965. On 20 September 1974 it became part of Rishiri-Rebun-Sarobetsu National Park.³⁴
• 1980–2001, the "Horonobe problem" (幌延問題): Around 1980, at the invitation of the town council and others, the state nuclear fuel agency (動燃) planned an interim storage facility for high-level radioactive waste in Horonobe. The plan was debated across Hokkaido for years.⁶ In 1998 it became a plan for a research facility only. An agreement signed on 16 November 2000 bars radioactive waste from the site, and the Underground Research Center opened in April 2001.⁵
• 1987: The JNR Haboro Line, which ended at Horonobe, closed on 30 March, and buses replaced it.⁶
• 1989–1999, reindeer: Ten reindeer arrived from Finland on 3 February 1989. A visitor facility opened in 1995 and moved to Hokushin (北進) in December 1999.⁶³
• 2003–2010: Otonrui Wind Farm began operating in February 2003.³⁵ The Sarobetsu Plain was listed under the Ramsar Convention on 8 November 2005.⁶ The Horotomi Bypass (幌富バイパス) opened on 14 March 2010.³⁶ On 1 April 2010 the town moved from Rumoi to Soya Subprefecture.⁶
• 2015–2020: The town began promoting its remote stations in fiscal 2015, and it held a "World Secluded Station Festa" that year.⁴³⁷ Horokaru opened in Horonobe Station in May 2018.³⁸ In 2019–2020, Hokkaido and the town accepted JAEA's plan to continue research until fiscal 2028.⁵
• 2021–2025, station closures: Kami-Horonobe (上幌延) and Yasushi (安牛) stations closed in March 2021.³⁹ Minami-Horonobe (南幌延) closed on 15 March 2025. Onoppunai (雄信内) became a signal stop the same day.⁴⁰⁴¹
• 2025–2026: On 17 August 2025, heavy rain flooded rivers in the town, and more than 300 households were ordered to evacuate.⁶ The town's rain gauge recorded 138.0 mm that day, its highest daily total since records began in 2006.⁴² On 12–13 January 2026, a swarm of shallow earthquakes struck near the town's eastern edge, centered at about 45°02′N 142°10′E. The largest were magnitude 5.1 and 5.2, according to JMA's preliminary lists.⁴³⁴⁴¹ Wikipedia says a seismometer run by the national disaster-research institute (NIED) at Kami-Toikan (上問寒) gave a preliminary reading of up to shindo 6-lower (unverified; Wikipedia cites no source for this).⁶

• Setting: Horonobe lies in the southwest of Soya Subprefecture. The Sea of Japan is to the west, and the Teshio River forms the southern border. The town office is at 45°01′N. The town likes to point out that Bordeaux and Milan are on the same parallel.¹³¹
• Sarobetsu Plain (サロベツ原野): This peat wetland runs along the coast between Toyotomi and Horonobe. Wikipedia calls it the largest-scale raised bog in Japan, and the regional tourism organization calls it Japan's largest.⁴⁵⁴⁶ Sources give different sizes: Wikipedia and the Soya Subprefecture give 216 km² (21,600 ha) for the plain, and the town gives 23,000 ha.⁴⁵²⁷¹³ The tourism organization gives 6,700 ha for the wetland itself.⁴⁶ Farm drainage has lowered the water table, and bamboo grass is spreading into the bog.⁴⁵
• Lakes and rivers: Panke-numa (パンケ沼, 3.55 km²) lies entirely in Horonobe. Penke-numa (ペンケ沼, 1.27 km²) is split almost evenly with Toyotomi.¹² According to Wikipedia, many of the Yamato shijimi clams sold as a Teshio specialty are caught in Panke-numa.⁶ The main rivers are the Teshio, the Sarobetsu and the Toikanbetsu. The hills include Chikomadake (知駒岳) and 名山台.⁶
• Forests: The town has about 2,000 ha of old-growth Sakhalin spruce. The Teshio primrose grows only on serpentine rock in northern Hokkaido.¹³ Much of the forested east belongs to Hokkaido University's Teshio research forest, which covers about 22,000 ha in all. It began in 1912 as the Toikanbetsu research forest, and visitors need permission from its office in Toikanbetsu to enter.⁶
• Parks: Horonobe is one of six municipalities in Rishiri-Rebun-Sarobetsu National Park, which covers 24,512 ha of land.³⁴
• Climate: The town gives an annual average temperature of 5.8 °C and a warmest-month average of 19.9 °C. Snow lies about 1 m deep from late November to early April.¹ Cold mornings can drop below −20 °C.⁴⁷ The Horonobe weather station measures only precipitation, which averages 892.1 mm a year (2006–2020).⁴⁸ The nearest full station is in Toyotomi. Its 1991–2020 averages are −6.1 °C in January and 19.4 °C in August, with 703 cm of total snowfall.⁴⁹ Its records are 33.1 °C (2000), −28.8 °C (2014) and 143 cm of snow on the ground (1985).⁵⁰

• Dairy: The town says it has about 9,000 cattle, more than three times its human population.¹ The town's dairy plan shows 7,797 dairy cattle in fiscal 2018, including 4,490 cows that had calved, which produced 34,962 t of milk. The target for fiscal 2030 is 38,000 t. There were also 434 beef cattle.⁵¹ The Horonobe and Toikanbetsu farm co-ops merged in 1992.³² Snow Brand Megmilk's Horonobe plant is at Sakae-machi 12.⁵²
• Energy: Otonrui Wind Farm has a capacity of 21,000 kW. The town gives its output as about 50 million kWh a year, sent to Hokkaido Electric's Horonobe substation.³⁵ Its operator, Horonobe Wind Power (幌延風力発電), was set up in 2000 as a public–private company, but the town sold most of its shares to JFE Engineering in 2014. Wikipedia says the power is now sold to Urban Energy, a JFE subsidiary. The company plans to replace the 28 turbines with five 4,200 kW units, and operations have been extended to June 2028.² Horonobe was named a "Biomass Industry City" on 23 October 2018, with cattle manure as the main fuel source.³⁵
• Research: The JAEA center has test tunnels 140 m, 250 m and 350 m deep.⁵³ The Horonobe Research Institute for the Subsurface Environment (幌延地圏環境研究所) studies underground microbes and groundwater.²³
• New products: The mizunara-cask project also tests two cold-hardy wine grapes, Yamasachi (山幸) and Kiyomi (清見).²⁶ Matsuda Farm (松田牧場) began selling Romanovsky lamb in April 2026.⁵⁴
• Population: The preliminary 2025 Census count of 2,012 is 15.1% below the 2020 figure.⁸ Since December 2024, the resident register has stayed between about 1,990 and 2,040 people.¹⁰ Horokaru gives advice to people thinking of moving to the town.⁵⁵ No town-level count of tourist visitors was found.

• Chōōji (長応寺), at Motomachi 23-15, is a temple that keeps a memorial tablet for Lady Otoku (お徳の方), a consort of Tokugawa Ieyasu.²³
• Kaneda Shinsho Calligraphy Museum (金田心象書道美術館) opened on 20 May 1990 in honor of a calligrapher born in Horonobe. It holds about 1,700 of his works and about 400 of his belongings, such as inkstones and brushes.⁶² The guidebook calls it Japan's first calligraphy museum.²³
• Horonobe Local Museum (幌延町郷土資料館) displays prehistoric artifacts, pioneer tools and local wildlife.³⁰
• Station characters: Each of four secluded stations has its own character, chosen in a 2016 contest. They are Nukanyan (ぬかにゃん, Nukanan), Numahikyon (ぬまひきょん, Shimonuma), Minami Hororin-san (ミナミほろりんさん, Minami-Horonobe) and Nopu-jii (のぷ爺, Onoppunai).⁶³ Minami-Horonobe and Onoppunai have since closed to passengers.⁴⁰⁴¹ Under the "My Station" movement, residents and donors help look after the stations.⁴
• Tourism ambassador: Inoue Hitoshi (井上仁志), a musician born in Horonobe, was appointed in April 2015.⁶⁴ The 2025 guidebook still lists him in the role.²⁹

Little Ainu history specific to Horonobe has been published. No Ainu cultural facility was found in the town. The Ainu heritage survives mainly in place names from the Hokkaido Government's list:

• Horonobe: from poro-nup ("big plain") or poro-nutap ("big river bend"). See Name origin.²⁸
• Toikanbetsu (問寒別): from toy-kamu-pet ("river covered with earth"). The list quotes the official town history (幌延町史), which links the name to edible earth that was plentiful along the river. Confidence level B.⁶⁵
• Panke-numa and Penke-numa: panke-to ("lower lake") and penke-to ("upper lake"). They are two large round lakes in the reed beds east of the Sarobetsu River. Confidence level A.⁶⁶⁶⁷
• Yasushi (安牛): from yas-us-i ("place where people scoop fish with nets"), because it was a net-fishing spot on the Teshio River. Confidence level B.⁶⁸
• Otonrui (オトンルイ): said to mean "path along the beach".²

None found.

• Kaneda Shinsho (金田心象, 1908–1990): calligrapher born in Horonobe, honored by the town's calligraphy museum.⁶⁶²
• Inoue Hitoshi (井上仁志): Horonobe-born guitarist of the band THE TON-UP MOTORS, which is on hiatus, and the town's tourism ambassador.⁶⁴²⁹
• Tsuda Hiroki (津田広喜, born 1948): former administrative vice-minister of finance, from Horonobe.⁶⁸¹