Rishiri 利尻町

The town takes its name from the island. The town explains "Rishiri" as the Ainu rii-shiri (リイ・シリ), "high island", after the 1,721 m peak at its center.¹ The Hokkaido Government's Ainu place-name list follows the scholar Yamada Shūzō. It gives ri-sir, "high – island", notes the older spelling Rishiiri (リシイリ), and rates this reading as firmly established (level A).²¹ A 1670 record, the Tsugaru Ittōshi, already mentions an offshore island called "Ruishin" (るいしん), and early-1800s sources write "Riishiri".⁸

The two districts also have Ainu names:

• Kutsugata (沓形). Yamada suggests kut-ka-an-nay, "river on top of the cliff", or perhaps kutci-kar-nay, "river where hardy-kiwi fruit is gathered". He calls the meaning unclear (level C).²²
• Senhoshi (仙法志). Yamada gives ceppo-oci, "place where small fish are plentiful". It is the same form as Senpōshi (仙鳳趾) in Kushiro Town.²³

• Prehistory. People have probably lived on Rishiri for about 10,000 years. More than 30 sites are known, dating from the Paleolithic to the Satsumon period.²⁴ Excavated in 1977, the Matawakka shell midden (亦稚貝塚; reading unverified) in Kutsugata yielded Susuya- and Okhotsk-culture finds.⁸ Two Okhotsk-style pots and two antler pieces from it are a Hokkaido-designated cultural property. One antler piece is carved with a bear, whales and fur seals.⁵²⁴
• Edo period. In 1670, Matsumae traders dealt with about 300 Ainu on the island. Smallpox in 1803 and 1805 killed many of them.⁸ In 1807, the crew of a Russian frigate under Khvostov landed and burned buildings at Tomari and Oshidomari. In 1808, the Aizu domain sent about 250 samurai to guard the island.⁸²⁴ Two Aizu men died when their ship drifted to Kutsugata on the way home from Sakhalin. Their graves at Tanetomi-chō became a town historic site in 1967.⁵²⁴ In 1848, the American Ranald MacDonald came ashore at Nozuka, now in Rishirifuji, and later taught English in Nagasaki.⁸²⁴
• Herring and settlement. Settlers from Minmaya in Aomori built Kutsugata's first wooden fishermen's house in 1883.⁸ Steamships brought migrants from Fukui, Akita, Ishikawa and other prefectures from 1885.⁴ The island's herring catch peaked in 1915 at 140,795 koku (about 100,000 t). By 1955 it had fallen to 16,151 koku.²⁴
• Disasters. Five cod boats were lost off Kutsugata Cape in 1954 (21 dead). In 1956, the year of the merger, six herring set-net boats sank off Kamui (35 dead).⁸ On 15 May 1964, a fire burned 236 houses in central Kutsugata, leaving 898 people homeless and killing two.³
• Parks and tourism. The islands became a prefectural natural park in 1950, a quasi-national park in 1965, and part of Rishiri-Rebun-Sarobetsu National Park in 1974. The Ukishima Festival began in 1970, and the town museum opened in 1980. Jet flights between Rishiri Airport and Chitose began in 1999.⁸
• Recent years. Rishiri Fureai Onsen opened in 2005. The island's four fishery cooperatives merged in 2008.⁸ The town's two junior high schools merged in 2017.⁵ In May 2018, a brown bear landed on the island, the first in 106 years.⁸ Kamui Whisky built its distillery in 2021.¹⁷ In March 2023, the three towns of Rishiri and Rebun islands jointly declared themselves zero-carbon cities. From 2020 to 2025, the town joined a national study of floating wind turbines offshore.⁸

• Setting. The town takes up the southwest of the nearly round island.¹⁵ It rises from the coast to the summit of Mt. Rishiri (1,721 m) and Sanchō-yama (三眺山, 1,461 m).³ Slopes are gentle up to 300–400 m and steep above. The ground is lava (andesite and basalt) and debris from the Rishiri volcano, which began erupting about 200,000 years ago.⁵
• Settlements. Villages line the narrow coastal strip. The main ones are Kutsugata in the north and Senhoshi in the south.³ Forest covers 24.48 km²; housing covers only 0.56 km².⁵
• Protected nature. The town lies in Rishiri-Rebun-Sarobetsu National Park.⁸ A native stand of Kuril cherry at Senhoshi has been a Hokkaido natural monument since 1968.⁵ Water that took more than 30 years to seep through the volcano emerges at springs such as the Reihō Spring (麗峰湧水).²⁵
• Climate. The warm Tsushima Current keeps the town milder than its latitude suggests.⁵ The Kutsugata weather station's 1991–2020 averages are 7.4 °C for the year, −4.0 °C in January, 19.9 °C in August, 916.2 mm of precipitation and 1,492.5 hours of sunshine. The station does not measure snow depth.²⁶ Extremes are 32.5 °C (7 August 1989) and −16.9 °C (17 February 1978), with a strongest gust of 36.0 m/s (2 October 2015).²⁷
• Drift ice. Sea ice sometimes reaches the shore. It destroyed marine products worth about ¥560 million in 1984.⁸

• Jobs. At the 2020 Census, 369 of 1,216 workers (30%) were in fishing, compared with 2,241 of 3,476 in 1985.⁵
• Fish catch in 2025. The town's figures, supplied by the Rishiri Fishery Cooperative, total 578 t worth ¥1.68 billion.⁵
  • Kombu: 104.6 t wild (¥495 million) and 109.9 t farmed (¥491 million)
  • Sea urchin: 14.5 t (¥384 million)
  • Sea cucumber: 63.7 t (¥182 million)
  • The town had 281 fishing boats in June 2026.⁵
• Uni hatchery. A center in Tanetomi-chō raises young urchins for release. Staff balance the numbers against the kombu available as food and remove starfish, which prey on urchins.²⁸
• Tourism. The town counted 108,100 visitors in fiscal 2025, of whom 23,900 stayed overnight. In the town's fiscal 2015–2025 series, the busiest year was fiscal 2017 (146,200) and the lowest fiscal 2020 (45,100). Fifteen lodgings can hold 585 guests in total.⁵ Taiwan is the island's largest foreign market.²⁹
• Aging. In fiscal 2025, 41.6% of residents were 65 or older. Only 10 babies were born in the year to March 2025.⁵
• Revitalization. The town runs Hotel Rishiri and a gravel quarry.⁵¹⁴ The "Tsuginoba" (ツギノバ) center, opened in 2020, helps people move to the island.⁸ The town also supports young people who take up fishing.⁶

• Shigure Otoha monument. A monument at Kutsugata Cape, set up in 1960, carries lines from "Defune no Minato".²⁰ Its line donto nami norikoete ("crashing over the waves") gave the cape its local name.⁴¹
• Shrines. Kita-no-Itsukushima Benten-gū (北のいつくしま弁天宮) stands on the Senhoshi coast. Two odd rocks near it are known as the "Sleeping Bear" and the "Human" rock.⁴²
• Rishiri Town Museum. Its holdings include archaeological finds, herring-fishing gear and an Akita-domain map of the island drawn around 1857.²⁴ The museum notes that the island's herring-fishery remains and customs are recognized as Hokkaido Heritage (北海道遺産).²⁴

• Population. About 300 Ainu lived on the island in 1670. After smallpox, only 9 households (34 people) remained in 1854.⁸
• Place names. The island and both districts carry Ainu names (see Name origin).²¹²²²³ The Akita-domain map of about 1857 in the museum records Ainu place names on the island.²⁴
• Today. No Ainu cultural facility or living Ainu community is documented in the town. The museum's collections and the place names are the main traces.

• Liuqiu Township (琉球郷), Pingtung County, Taiwan. Rishiri and Rishirifuji signed a friendship exchange agreement with it online on 15 November 2024. Liuqiu is a coral island of about 12,000 people that also lives from tourism and fishing.²⁹
• Domestic. No formal domestic sister city was found, though the town's statistical handbook calls Rebun its "sister island" (姉妹島).⁵ Fukushima governors and Aizuwakamatsu mayors have visited the Aizu samurai graves, and exchange programs were held in 2008 and 2018.⁸

• Shigure Otoha (時雨音羽, 1898–1980), lyricist born in Kutsugata. He wrote "Kimi Koishi" and "Defune no Minato" and became an honorary citizen in 1977.⁵²⁴
• Sakamoto Shunpei (酒本俊平, 1884–1965), doctor. He opened the Hakuai Clinic in Kutsugata in 1912 and became the town's first honorary citizen.⁵²⁴
• Ida Sadakatsu (井田定勝, 1896–1984), head of Senhoshi Village, who helped bring about the 1956 merger and became the first mayor.²⁴
• Itō Hidehito (伊東秀仁), former figure skater, from Rishiri.³