Tomari 泊村

The village gives the name as coming from the Ainu Hemoi-tomari (ヘモイトマリ), "inlet where trout (masu) gather"⁸. The Hokkaido Government's Ainu place-name list records the Tomari village name as moyre-tomari (モイレトマリ), "calm anchorage". Nagata Hōsei (永田方正) glossed it as 緩潮の泊, "anchorage with gentle tides". The commentary by the place-name scholar Yamada Hidezō explains that in Ainu times the inlet at the present village centre was called Moyre-tomari. Several other "-tomari" names lie along this coast, and the village name probably came from this central one.²⁵ In its entry for Tomari in Esashi, the same list says that tomari itself was a Japanese word borrowed into Ainu²⁵. In Japanese the kanji 泊 means "anchorage" or "to anchor".

Other Ainu-derived place names in the village:

• Teruki (照岸): from terke-us-i, "place where one jumps across" (Nagata's gloss). Yamada's commentary suggests it referred to hopping over the shore rocks.²⁵
• Moiwa (茂岩): from mo-iwa, "small mountain". Here the name refers to a sharp, pyramid-shaped rock standing in the sea.²⁶
• Shibui (渋井): from sinpuy, "spring or well". A spring walled with stones like a well was found beside the road up the Shibui River.²⁷
• Kabuto Cape: known as Kamui-sirpa (カムイシレパ), "cape of the gods", and treated as a sacred place¹⁷.

• Ainu era: The coast's place names (moyre-tomari, mo-iwa, sinpuy) and the legends of Kabuto Cape and Benten-jima come from the Ainu period (see Ainu heritage)²⁵¹⁷. No archaeological sites were found in the sources checked.
• Edo period: The Matsumae domain opened the Furuu trading post (フルウ場所) here. Tomari Inari Shrine (泊稲荷神社) is said to have been founded in 1682 by the post's contractor, Tatsuke Shinsuke (田付新助) of the Fukushimaya house. The Inari shrine at Okishinai followed in 1730.¹ The village dates its founding to 1601⁶. The area came under direct shogunate rule in 1807 and returned to Matsumae in 1821. It came under the shogunate again in 1855, and the Shōnai domain guarded it.¹
• Coal (1856 onward): In 1856 a fisherman found coal in the hills at Kayanuma¹³. In 1864 the Hakodate magistrate's office brought in American engineers and began mining¹⁵. The village's tourism page dates full-scale mining to 1862 instead¹⁴. A 2.8 km tramway from the pithead to Kayanuma port opened in 1869. Loaded cars ran downhill by gravity and oxen or horses pulled them back up; iron rails replaced the wooden ones in 1881.¹⁵¹⁴
• Meiji fishing villages: Furuu District was created in 1869¹. In 1873 the old Tomari village had 82 households and 299 people. By 1879 it had 90 households, 426 people and 167 Japanese-style boats, and its products were herring, masu trout, salmon, cod and kombu.²⁸ During the herring boom more than 50 fishing lodges lined the shore. The Kawamura family lodge now preserved at Nishin Goten Tomari dates from Meiji 27 (1894; the village page prints the Western year as 1884).¹⁶ The Sakazuki hot spring was developed around 1905 as a bathhouse for herring fishermen, known as "Takashima no Yu"¹⁹.
• 1909–1923: The five villages merged to form Tomari (1909), which later became a first-class village (1923)¹.
• Coal's peak and closure: A ropeway to Iwanai port replaced the tramway in 1931. A private railway ran from Hattari to Iwanai from 1946 until 1962, when a typhoon destroyed its bridge over the Horikappu River.¹⁵ The mine closed on 30 August 1964¹⁵. The Tomari Coal Mine, opened afterwards for local development and heating coal, closed in 1969.¹³ At its height about 10,000 people lived in Tomari, roughly half of them at Kayanuma¹³. The resident register fell from 8,934 in 1960 to 4,771 in 1965²⁹.
• Nuclear era: Unit 1 began commercial operation in June 1989, Unit 2 in April 1991 and Unit 3 in December 2009⁹. The plant was first planned inland near the Kyowa border as the "Kyowa–Tomari Power Station". In 1978 the site was moved to the Tomari coast at Horikappu.¹⁰ When Unit 3 shut down for inspection on 5 May 2012, Japan was left with no operating reactors¹⁰.
• Recent events: Work on a new seawall began in March 2024³⁰. On 1 October 2024 the Shiokaze Line community bus replaced Hokkaido Chuo Bus's Kamoenai route³¹. The NRA granted Unit 3's permission on 30 July 2025¹¹, and the Hokkaido Government held a residents' briefing on Unit 3 in the village on 20 September 2025³². In July 2026 Hokkaido Electric set August 2027 as the seawall's completion date³³. It announced a fatal accident at the plant on 19 August 2026 and published its cause-and-prevention report on 4 September 2026³⁴.

Tomari lies in western Hokkaido on the southwest side of the Shakotan Peninsula, facing the Sea of Japan. Its five settlements are strung out along National Route 229.⁶ Of the village's 82.35 km² (the village's own figure), 70.57 km² is forest and 6.00 km² is wild land. Fields cover only 2.19 km², residential land 0.43 km², and there are no rice paddies.⁶ The highest peak listed is Kumaotsuki-yama (熊追山, 805.4 m), followed by Takinosawa-yama (714.0 m) and Tengu-yama (688.7 m). The main rivers are the Chazu, Tama, Moheru, Sakazuki and Moiwa. Other landmarks include Kabuto Cape, Benten-jima and the Ōkawa-no-taki falls.⁷ The Sakazuki area lies within Niseko-Shakotan-Otaru Kaigan Quasi-National Park (ニセコ積丹小樽海岸国定公園)¹⁹.

The Japan Meteorological Agency has no station in Tomari, so the figures below come from the stations on either side of it (1991–2020 normals)³⁵.

• Kamoenai (神恵内), to the north: The annual mean is 9.1 °C, with a January mean of −2.3 °C and an August mean of 21.4 °C. Annual precipitation is 1,257.6 mm. December has the strongest mean wind at 4.7 m/s.³⁶ The station's record high is 33.6 °C (12 Aug 2026) and its record low is −13.8 °C (8 Feb 2019), which is mild for Hokkaido. The strongest daily wind recorded is 24.5 m/s from the west.³⁷
• Kyowa (共和), to the south: This station was called "Iwanai" until November 2008³⁵. It averages 643 cm of snowfall a year, with a mean maximum snow depth of 106 cm.³⁸

• Electricity: The power station sits on the Tomari coast in the Horikappu district. Its three reactors are 579 MW, 579 MW and 912 MW, for a total of 2.07 GW.⁹¹⁰ Hokkaido Electric projected in October 2025 that restarting Unit 3 would cut regulated household electricity rates by about 11%³⁹. At the 2015 Census, electricity, gas, heat and water employed 117 of the village's 837 working residents. Construction employed 168 and services 284.²⁹
• Fishing: Fishing employed 282 of 1,202 workers in 1980 but only 65 in 2015²⁹. The fisheries cooperative for Furuu District (古宇郡漁業協同組合) has its headquarters in Tomari and a branch at Sakazuki⁷. A reference encyclopedia lists walleye pollock and squid as the main coastal catches²⁸. Local shops sell scallops, sea urchin and salmon products²¹. The fisheries cooperative and local fishers now farm salmon in sea pens for about six months, and the fish are sold as "Kabuto Salmon"²².
• Public finance: Property tax on the plant and national power-siting grants mean Tomari receives no ordinary local allocation tax⁷. It was the only Hokkaido municipality allocated none in both FY2025 and FY2026.²⁴
• Population: The resident register fell from 8,934 (1960) to 1,399 (31 March 2025)²⁹. The census count dropped 11.4% between 2015 and 2020² and another 5.0% to 1,490 in the 2025 preliminary count. In that count the number of men rose 2.4% while the number of women fell 12.5%.⁴
• Tourism: No official visitor counts were found.

• Matsumae Kagura (松前神楽): Tomari is among the municipalities listed for the Matsumae Kagura Hokkaido federation (松前神楽北海道連合保存会). The shrine dance was designated a national Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property on 8 March 2018.⁴¹
• Shrines and temples: Tomari Inari Shrine is traditionally dated to 1682¹. Chiryū-ji (智竜寺) dates from 1862¹. Hōrin-ji (法輪寺) is a Sōtō Zen temple. The village dates it to 1862, while Wikipedia gives 1863. Each panel of its coffered ceiling has a different painting of flowers, birds, landscapes, people or the zodiac animals. The panels are said to have been painted over several days by a travelling artist in the mid-Meiji period.⁴²¹
• Sacred elm (神木): A Japanese elm (ハルニレ) about 320 years old and listed as a Hokkaido notable tree. Local legend says people who cut its branches died of fever a few days later.⁴³
• Museums: Nishin Goten Tomari (herring history)¹⁶ and the Tomarin-kan nuclear PR centre⁴⁴. Both are described under Sights & activities.

Tomari's Ainu past survives mainly in place names such as moyre-tomari, mo-iwa, sinpuy and terke-us-i²⁵²⁶²⁷ and in local legends. Kabuto Cape, called Kamui-sirpa ("cape of the gods"), is linked to a story about an Ainu maiden. She hid a treasured golden helmet in a cave, and after she died it turned into the helmet-shaped rock. Another story tells of an old village chief who offered a golden boat at the cape and a silver boat at Benten-jima for the Ainu people's happiness.¹⁷ At Benten-jima, a beautiful Ainu girl is said to have come every day to pray for her love and to have won it⁴⁵. No Ainu cultural facility or documented archaeological site in the village was found.

• Ikata (伊方町), Nishiuwa District, Ehime Prefecture: sister city since February 1998⁷. The village says the tie-up came about through their shared link to nuclear power. Its Tomari no Utage sake was created with help from Ikata's brewers' guild to mark it.²¹

• Kazushi Monji (文字一志, born 1963): Born in Tomari. He moved to Kutchan at the age of one and has been Kutchan's mayor since January 2019.⁶²
• Junichi Makiguchi (牧口準市, 1931–2024): A lawyer from Tomari. He was president of the Sapporo Bar Association (1988) and vice-president of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations (1991).⁶³