Kimobetsu 喜茂別町

• Kimobetsu (喜茂別): the Hokkaido Government's list of Ainu place names gives two readings. Matsuura Takeshirō's reading is kim-un-pet (キムウンペッ), "the river that goes into the mountains". His 1858 diary describes crossing the mountains from the Kimobetsu River to Sapporo. The place-name scholar Yamada's reading is kim-o-pet (キムオペッ), "the river deep in the mountains". The list notes that either way the name has the pattern "mountain … river".²⁶
• The town's own explanations: the town website renders it as Kim-o-betsu, "a river with many mountains",¹ and its history page as Kimu-o-petsu, "a river deep in the mountains".¹³ Both fit a town ringed by Mt. Yōtei, Mt. Shiribetsu and more than forty rivers.¹
• Other Ainu names in the town:
  • Rusan (留産): from ru-o-san-i, "the place where the trail comes down (to the big river)". An old trail from the south crossed the tableland west of Mt. Shiribetsu and came down to the Shiribetsu River here.²⁷
  • Misono (御園): from the Orowen-Shiribetsu River, oro-wen-sirpet ("the Shiribetsu tributary whose inside is bad"). The name was cut down to 御路園 and later to 御園, now read "Misono".²⁸
  • Shiribetsu (尻別): probably sir-pet, "mountain river", for a river that flows a long way through the mountains.²⁹

• Ancient legend: the Nihon Shoki says that in 659 Abe no Hirafu reached "Shiribeshi" (後方羊蹄) and set up a local office there. Kimobetsu is one of several places proposed for this site, and the Hiraoka district has a Hirafu Shrine (比羅夫神社).⁵ The town's chronology dates the shrine's founding to 1914 (it gives the Japanese year as Taishō 2).⁹
• Ainu era and Matsuura's visits: Matsuura Takeshirō came through in 1857 and 1858, following Ainu trails near today's Routes 230 and 276. He crossed Nakayama Pass toward Jōzankei in 1858. He wrote that the land between Yōtei and Shiribetsu, two peaks that resembled Mt. Fuji and Mt. Tsukuba, was "the most sacred ground on the island". According to Japanese Wikipedia's local-history section, no Ainu lived permanently in the area at that time. Ainu from Abuta and Usu came to fish for salmon.⁵
• Hongan-ji Road (1870–71): Higashi Hongan-ji built the Hongan-ji Road (本願寺道路), the forerunner of Route 230, under the head priest Gennyo (現如). On Matsuura's advice it was routed through Kimobetsu. In 1871 the councillor Soejima Taneomi named Nakayama Pass during an inspection.⁵¹⁰
• First Wajin settlers (1871): Abe Kazaemon, a retainer of the Date clan's Watari branch, settled here and ran a post station (駅逓).⁹¹⁰ It burned down in 1872, and Abe reopened it in 1875 and again in 1893.⁵
• Group settlers: in 1902 the "Nanbu group" (南部団体) of just over ten households arrived. In 1911, 253 households from Yamanashi and 80 from Fukushima came as organized groups.⁹ Yamanashi's Fuefuki River had flooded badly in 1907 and 1910.⁵ One of the Yamanashi settlers, Shimoyama Kakichi (下山嘉吉), began growing white runner beans (白花豆) in 1912 and had purified the strain by 1924.⁵ In 2014, old documents about Kyūsoku Village (now Kōshū City, Yamanashi) turned up among old community-hall property.¹⁵
• Village founded (1917): Kimobetsu Village was formed when it split from Makkari Village (now Rusutsu).⁹¹⁰
• Railway and mine: the railway reached Kimobetsu from Kyōgoku in 1928.¹⁰ A branch to the Nittetsu Kimobetsu mine opened in 1940. The Iburi Jūkan Railway (Date–Kutchan) was completed in 1941. The national railways bought it in 1944 and renamed it the Iburi Line.⁹ Nippon Steel bought the Kami-Kimobetsu mine (上喜茂別鉱山) in 1937. It was worked on and off until 1953 and was held back by its high arsenic content.⁵
• Asparagus: cultivation began in 1929. The Asahi Asparagus Canning Company was founded in 1933, and a farmers' cooperative cannery followed in 1938.⁹ From 1939 the farmers' cannery made "Cradle"-brand canned asparagus.⁵ The tourism association calls Kimobetsu the place where Crado Konou (クレードル興農) was founded.¹⁶
• Postwar: a fire in 1948 destroyed 317 homes in the town center.⁹ Kimobetsu became a town in 1952. In 1965 an "Asparagus Birthplace" monument went up at Nakayama Pass, together with a national lodge, a product hall and a campground.¹¹ Ageimo went on sale at the pass in 1968.⁵ The town was designated a depopulated area in 1970.¹¹
• Railway closure (1986): the Iburi Line closed on 1 November 1986 and was replaced by buses. Kimobetsu had four stations on it: Misono, Kita-Suzukawa, Kimobetsu and Rusan.¹¹⁵
• Heisei era (1989–2019):
  • 1993: the product hall at Nakayama Pass became a Michi-no-Eki.
  • 1995: named one of Japan's "Water Villages".
  • 1996–2009: the town's Furuppu Onsen was open.
  • 2010: Kimobetsu High School closed and the Sato-no-Eki Hotto Kimobetsu market opened.
  • 2011: a Yokohama Reitō factory was brought in, the first company under the town's investment ordinance.
  • 2013: Usapara-kun was created.
  • 2015: the town-run Usapara-gō bus started.
  • 2016: the town marked its centenary with a new emblem and started taking furusato nozei donations.¹⁵
• Recent:
  • 2021: Kimobetsu declared itself a zero-carbon town.⁵ On 1 June the town announced that the All Japan Women's Baseball Federation had certified it as Hokkaido's first "Women's Baseball Town". Since April that year the Hornets Ladies women's club team had been using the town ballpark as a practice base.³⁰ Japanese Wikipedia's article on the federation now lists Kimobetsu among its former Women's Baseball Towns.³¹
  • 2024: Katsuhito Hayashi (林己人) was elected mayor.
  • 2025: Suzukawa Elementary School closed at the end of March.⁵²³
  • 2025: ageimo was recognized as a 100-Year Food.¹⁸
  • 2026: between April and mid-September the town posted 28 brown-bear reports, one of them a mother and cub near the Nakayama Pass snow shelter.³²

• Location: southeastern Shiribeshi, on the southeastern foot of Mt. Yōtei. Routes 230 and 276 cross in the town. The town gives distances of 66 km to Sapporo, 76 km to Chitose, 86 km to Otaru, 47 km to Lake Tōya and 179 km to Hakodate.⁶

• Mountains:

  • Mt. Yōtei (1,898 m): its highest point is in Kimobetsu.²³³
  • Mt. Shiribetsu (尻別岳, 1,107.4 m): has a cone like a smaller Yōtei.⁵
  • Mt. Kimobetsu (喜茂別岳, 1,176.8 m).⁵
  • Nakayama Pass (835 m): the highest point of Route 230 on the way in from Sapporo.¹⁹

• Rivers: the town counts 41 rivers large and small.¹ The Shiribetsu River rises west of Mt. Fure, on the divide with the Lake Shikotsu basin. It picks up the Orowen-Shiribetsu and Kimobetsu rivers, then turns northwest around Yōtei and reaches the Sea of Japan at Isoya in Rankoshi. Salmon and cherry salmon swim up it, and it was named Japan's clearest class-A river seven times between 1999 and 2006.²⁵

• Land use: of 18,941 ha, 15,403 ha is forest. The 1,220 ha of farmland is almost all upland fields, with 1 ha of paddy.³⁴ The tourism association says forest covers about 80% of the town.³⁵

• Protected areas: Mt. Yōtei and Nakayama Pass are in Shikotsu-Tōya National Park.³³¹⁹ The plant communities around Yōtei's trails were designated a national natural monument, the "Alpine Flora Zone of Shiribeshi-yama", in 1921.³³

• Climate: the town is cold and inland. Figures are from the JMA station at Kimobetsu, averaged over 1991–2020.³⁶

  Measure	Figure
  Annual mean temperature	5.9 °C
  January mean	−7.2 °C (average daily low −14.1 °C)
  August mean	19.6 °C
  Annual precipitation	1,178 mm
  Total snowfall	954 cm a season
  Average deepest snow cover	145 cm

  Records: 34.5 °C on 25 August 2023, −31.9 °C on 20 February 1991, and 189 cm of snow on 8 February 1999.³⁷

• Agriculture: farming is the town's main industry, and the town office describes its produce as high-quality crops grown in a cool climate.²³ MAFF estimates farm output in 2024 at ¥2.13 billion:³⁴

  Sector	Output (¥)
  Crops (total)	1.35 billion
  – vegetables	820 million
  – potatoes	300 million
  – beans	130 million
  – industrial crops	90 million
  Livestock (total)	780 million
  – dairy	30 million

  The pig figure is suppressed for confidentiality; two pig farms are listed. The 2020 agricultural census counted 80 farm businesses and 184 people who farmed at least 60 days a year. Farm co-op services come from the Kimobetsu branch of JA Yōtei.³⁴⁵

• Crops:

  • Asparagus: Fushimi Seika, which has grown asparagus for more than 60 years, grows green and white spears in open fields rather than in the greenhouses that have become more common.¹⁶
  • Potatoes: planted around Golden Week (early May) and dug in September. They are high in starch.²¹
  • Newer crops: melons and tomatoes have increased in recent years.²³

• Manufacturing: Crado Konou (クレードル興農) has a factory in Kimobetsu and makes "Shizenkan" whole-kernel corn.⁵²³ Yokohama Reitō opened a Kimobetsu plant in 2011 under the town's investment ordinance.¹⁵

• Tourism: 4.099 million tourist visits in fiscal 2025, 7th in Hokkaido. That was 13.9% fewer than the year before but 67.5% more than in fiscal 2018.²⁰ The official Hokkaido Michi-no-Eki listing says about 4 million travelers stop at the Nakayama Pass station each year.⁴

• Population: the town lost 6.0% of its people between 2015 and 2020.⁷ It has been a designated depopulated area since 1970.¹¹ The mayor names a falling birth rate, aging, population loss and rising prices as the main challenges. The 7th comprehensive plan puts "a town where children grow up well" first.²³

• Revitalization: Kimobetsu started taking furusato nozei donations in 2016.¹⁵ The Minister for Internal Affairs has designated it an eligible municipality for 1 October 2025 to 30 September 2026.²⁴ The town has also hosted community-support volunteers (地域おこし協力隊) since 2011,¹⁵ run the Usapara-gō town bus since 2015,³⁸ and declared itself a zero-carbon town in 2021.⁵

• Shrines and temples:
  • Hirafu Shrine in Hiraoka.⁹⁵
  • Kimobetsu Shrine: Abe Kazaemon put up a horse-headed Kannon statue in its grounds in 1911.⁵
  • Odaishi-yama (お大師山): the round hill in front of Kimobetsu Elementary School. Eighty-eight stone Buddhas of 15 types, each carved with its donor's name, are said to have been set up here in 1930. The town's adult-learning group cleans the site every year.⁵²
• Galleries and heritage:
  • Gallery Somabito (ギャラリー杣人): free exhibitions from April to November.⁵³
  • Setsugekkaro (雪月花廊): a closed school turned into a café, guesthouse and rider house.⁵⁴
  • Nakayama Pass monuments: the Asparagus Birthplace monument (1965), a statue of Gennyo, who built the Hongan-ji Road (1967), and the Asparagus Tower (1989).¹¹¹⁵⁵

The town's name and several district names come from Ainu: Kimobetsu, Rusan, Misono (from Orowen-Shiribetsu) and Shiribetsu.^26272829 Matsuura's 1857–58 routes through the area followed trails that Ainu used for salmon fishing, hunting and seasonal work trips toward Ishikari. When Soejima Taneomi passed through in 1871, the Rusan area was still called Shinnoshike-kotan (シンノシケコタン, "the village in the middle").⁵ However, Japanese Wikipedia's history section says no Ainu lived here permanently by the mid-19th century and that the area was a fishing ground for Ainu from Abuta and Usu.⁵ No Ainu cultural facility, archaeological site or regular Ainu event in the town was found during research. The nearest major center is Upopoy (the National Ainu Museum) in Shiraoi.

• Sanuki City, Kagawa Prefecture (香川県さぬき市): Kimobetsu passed a resolution on a sister-city tie with Samukawa Town (寒川町) in 1970,¹¹ and the tie was signed on 24 December 1970. Sanuki City took over the relationship when Samukawa and four other towns merged to form it on 1 April 2002.⁷²⁵ Earlier, in 1955, students from Kagawa's Ishida High School had come to Kimobetsu for farm training.¹¹
• International: none found.

• Kazuya Tatekabe (たてかべ和也): voice actor, from Kimobetsu. Some sources give Kutchan instead.⁵⁷³
• Naoki Eika (栄花直輝): police officer and kendō practitioner, born in Kimobetsu in 1967.⁵⁷⁴
• Eiichi Tamura (田村英一): freelance announcer, formerly with Hokkaido Broadcasting (HBC). He is listed in the Kimobetsu article, but his own Wikipedia biography gives only "Hokkaido" as his home (unverified).⁵
• Kunihiko Yamamoto (山本邦彦): former vice-governor of Hokkaido.⁵