Toyokoro 豊頃町

The name is Ainu, but its meaning is uncertain. The town gives three readings. One is toekoro (トエコロ), "place of large butterbur". Another is topiokaru or topyokaoro (トピオカル／トプヨカオロ), "place where people died and no one lives". A third is toi-koro (トイ・コロ), "place with much soil and few stones". The second goes with a legend. A chief from Kashipira (常室) raided a valley on the present Ikeda border and was driven back. His whole party threw themselves into a small marsh in Toyokoro and died, leaving the kotan empty²⁴.

The Hokkaido Government's Ainu place-name list gives Nagata Hōsei's form トプヨカオロ, with its meaning unknown. A 1947 station-name guide read トエコロ as "many butterburs", but editions from 1950 on dropped this. The list rates the name's certainty at C²⁵. Matsuura Takeshirō wrote the name "Tohioka" (トヒヲカ), and the place-name scholar Yamada Hidezō (山田秀三) doubted the butterbur reading⁹.

Other local names:

• Otsu (大津): oho-utnay, "deep branch river", or oohot-nay, "deep river". After river-mouth works in 1963, this side channel became the main mouth of the Tokachi, and the old lower course became the Urahoro-Tokachi River (浦幌十勝川)²⁶²⁴.
• Tōfutsu (十弗): to-put, "mouth of the marsh"²⁵²⁴.
• Moiwa (茂岩), the town-office district: mo-iwa, "small hill"²⁴.
• Chōbushi (長節): the town says chip-ushi, "where fish (salmon) gather"²⁴. The Hokkaido list prefers ci-o-pus-i, "(the lake) that bursts open by itself", from its sand-bar outlet²⁷.
• Tabikorai (旅来): tapkop-ray, "died at the round hill", which is tied to a legend of a battle with Ainu from Hidaka²⁴²⁷.

• Ainu era: legends of the Kashipira raid and the Tabikorai battle survive in local place names²⁴. Three Ainu chashi (fort) sites, Rebunnai No. 2 and Tabikorai A and B, are town-designated cultural properties⁹.
• 1798–1858: Otsu had a fishing station (番屋) by about 1798 and a post station (駅逓) by 1799. A road to Kushiro opened in 1805, as the shogunate built roads to defend Ezo against Russian ships. Otsu became the fishery and transport hub for inland Tokachi. In 1858 Matsuura Takeshirō surveyed the Tokachi River basin¹⁶.
• 1880–1884: a joint administrative office for Otsu and four other districts opened in 1880⁹, the year the town counts as its founding¹. In 1884 an office for the relief of the Ainu (ウタリ救済事務所) opened at Nagausu (長臼) to teach them farming, but it closed after five years¹⁶.
• 1883: Yoda Benzō's Banseisha group, the pioneers of Obihiro, landed at Otsu²⁸.
• 1890s: prisoners built the road inland from Otsu to Memuro. The 2022 town profile says it opened in 1894²⁸, while the town's history page dates its completion to 1893¹⁶. Settlers from Toyama and Hiroshima reached the Ninomiya area from about 1894¹⁶.
• 1896–1901: Ninomiya Takachika's Kōfukusha (興復社) chose the Ushishubetsu plain, and from 1897 settlers came from Sōma in Fukushima¹⁸. By 1901, 160 households were farming 844 ha, part of a 1,345 ha "Ninomiya Great Farm" with its own roads, bridges and drains¹⁶.
• Otsu's heyday: a steamer service to Hakodate began in 1897, and at its peak Otsu had about 2,000 people. A salmon slump began in 1902, and a fire in 1903 destroyed a third of the town²⁸.
• 1904–1920: the railway between Obihiro and Toshibetsu opened in 1904, and Toyokoro Station became a collection point for goods¹⁶²⁹. Toyokoro Village was formed on 1 April 1906⁹. Tōfutsu Station opened in 1911¹⁶. The Ninomiya lion-dance kagura is said to have begun in 1920, when the Hōtoku Ninomiya Shrine was newly built³⁰.
• 1952: the Tokachi-oki earthquake of 4 March destroyed or damaged more than half of the houses in the village⁹.
• 1955: Otsu Village (5,255 people in 1950) was dissolved, and part of it joined Toyokoro¹⁰. The same year, Tanekawa Gonjirō (種川権次郎) of Tōfutsu found the cold-tolerant "Gonjirō soybean" (ゴンジロー大豆)¹⁶.
• 1960s: the Tokachi River mouth was realigned in 1963²⁶. Toyokoro became a town on 1 January 1965¹, and a levee finished that year ended the regular floods at Tabikorai¹⁶.
• Tsunamis: Otsu was hit by the tsunamis of 1960 (Chilean earthquake), 2003 (Tokachi-oki earthquake) and 2011 (Great East Japan Earthquake)²⁸.
• 2012–2021: "Jewelry Ice" was named in 2012 and drew media attention from 2016. The town trademarked the name in 2018 and opened the "Jewelry House" rest stop, rebuilt in wood in 2021¹⁴.

Toyokoro lies at the southeastern end of the Tokachi region, facing the Pacific¹⁹. The lower Tokachi River and its tributary, the Toshibetsu River (利別川), run through the town. Smaller rivers include the Ushishubetsu (牛首別川) and the Yūdō (湧洞川)⁹. The river splits the town center: the town office is in Moiwa, about 2 km from Toyokoro Station on the far bank²⁹¹².

The coast is a string of lagoons behind sand bars. The two main lagoons are Yūdō Marsh (湧洞沼, 4.43 km²) and Chōbushi Lake (長節湖, 1.12 km²)⁸. Yūdō, which the town's tourism pages call Yūdō Lake (湧洞湖), is about 19 km around and 30 km south of the town center³¹. Chōbushi is brackish and lies 4 km southwest of Otsu³². Two dune plant communities are Hokkaido-designated natural monuments³³:

• Toitokki Beach with the Nutabetto Wetland (shared with Urahoro), a dune 2.1 km long with lingonberry, crowberry and beach rose³⁴
• the Chōbushi lakeshore

The wild-plant community on the Yūdō lakeshore, where crowberry and lingonberry grow among beach rose and Ezo-kanzō daylilies, is a town-designated natural monument³⁵.

Climate. At the JMA's Otsu weather station, the 1991–2020 normals are:³⁶

• mean annual temperature 5.7°C
• January −7.4°C, with a mean daily low of −13.9°C
• August 18.1°C
• precipitation 1,076 mm a year
• sunshine 1,981 hours a year, sunniest in January–March and cloudiest in June–August

Records there are 36.9°C (23 July 2025) and −27.7°C (1 February 1978)³⁷. Snow depth is not measured at Otsu³⁶.

Agriculture. The number of farms fell from 401 in 1990 to 169 in 2020²¹. The average farm is 68 ha, 21 times the national average according to the town's agriculture page; the 2022 town profile gives 43 times²¹¹⁹. The main 2020 crops were wheat (1,190 ha), azuki beans (795 ha), potatoes (887 ha, 33,300 t), sugar beet (569 ha, 39,900 t), kidney beans and soybeans. Livestock earns more: 46 dairy farms kept 12,988 cattle, about 280 per farm, and 32 beef farms kept 4,085. Of the roughly ¥13.3 billion in farm output, 74% came from livestock²¹.

Fisheries. Otsu Fishing Port was completed in 1979 and also serves as a refuge harbor for boats from Tokachi and Kushiro³⁸. Thanks to hatchery releases, salmon from set nets make up about 70% of landings by volume and 60% by value, according to the 2022 town profile¹⁹. The town's older fisheries page gives about 92%. Its 2005 figures show a catch of 3,706 t (salmon 3,416 t, then hokki clams 129 t, whelks 72 t, shishamo 62 t and hairy crab 11 t), down from 5,407 t in 1985, and fishing households falling from 112 to 52³⁸.

Businesses. Other employers include an Aisin test site (アイシン豊頃試験場), the Eurus Toyokoro Solar Park, JA Toyokoro and the Otsu fisheries cooperative⁹. ELEZO (株式会社エレゾ社) was founded in 2005 by the chef Sasaki Shōta (佐々木章太) and incorporated in Otsu in 2009. It hunts Ezo deer, raises its own animals, and ages, processes and cooks the meat³⁹. In 2019 it won a Ministry of Agriculture award for making use of culled wildlife⁴⁰.

Tourism. In FY2025 Toyokoro had 64,600 visitors, down from 67,100 the year before, and all of them were day-trippers. The busiest months were September (21,900) and February (9,700, in the Jewelry Ice season)⁴¹. Visitors to the Jewelry Ice alone grew from over 6,000 in 2018 to 13,800 in 2019 and 16,000 in 2020¹⁴.

Population and revitalization. The population fell from 3,182 in 2015 to 3,022 in 2020 and 2,704 in 2025 (preliminary)⁴⁵, compared with 7,386 in 1970¹². Foreign residents on the register rose from 74 in January 2026 to 153 in August 2026⁶. To attract settlers, the town pays a ¥100,000 yearly allowance for each child up to age six and helps with buying homes¹⁹. The Cocoloco association (一般社団法人ココロコ), founded in March 2018, runs the Cocoloco Terrace center in Moiwa and handles tourism, local-product sales and relocation help⁴²⁴³.

Hōtoku tradition. Ninomiya Takachika taught Sontoku's principles at monthly imokoji (芋コジ) meetings held on the 20th. The Ushishubetsu Hōtoku Society (牛首別報徳会) has kept meeting for more than 120 years, and local schools still teach Hōtoku. The Ninomiya Hōtoku-kan (二宮報徳館) holds Takachika's calligraphy and a coat he wore¹⁸.

Eru Yume-kan (える夢館), Moiwa Hon-chō 166, has local history exhibits, a hall with more than 300 seats and the town library. It is closed on Mondays and on the day after a public holiday⁵⁵.

Little is written about Ainu life in Toyokoro, and no Ainu cultural facility was found in the town. The main traces are in place names, legends, fort sites and one painting:

• the Tabikorai (tapkop-ray) battle story
• the Kashipira raid said to have emptied the Toyokoro kotan
• Tōfutsu (to-put), Moiwa (mo-iwa) and Chōbushi²⁴²⁷²⁵
• three chashi (fort) sites, Rebunnai No. 2 and Tabikorai A and B, designated by the town⁹
• the Ema of a Kamuy-nomi (絵馬カムイノミの図), a votive painting of an Ainu prayer ceremony kept at Otsu Inari Shrine (大津稲荷神社). It is a Hokkaido-designated cultural property, and Japanese Wikipedia credits it to the painter Kawanabe Kyōsai (河鍋暁斎)³³⁹

The best-documented historical episode is from 1884. An office for the relief of the Ainu opened at Nagausu in the Tabikorai area to teach farming, and it was closed after five years¹⁶.

• Sōma, Fukushima: sister city since 3 March 1983⁷⁵. Ninomiya Takachika's Kōfukusha settlers came from Sōma¹⁸.
• Namerikawa, Toyama: sister city since 10 July 1984⁷⁶.
• Summerland, British Columbia, Canada: sister city since 11 June 1996. Toyokoro borders Ikeda and Summerland borders Penticton, two towns that were already sister cities. After a Toyokoro group visited in 1994, the two towns agreed to a tie of their own⁷⁷. Exchanges include junior-high-school student visits⁷⁸.

• Ninomiya Takachika (二宮尊親): grandson of Ninomiya Sontoku and leader of the Kōfukusha, which settled the Ushishubetsu (Ninomiya) plain from 1897¹⁸.
• Urashima Hisashi (浦島久): born in Toyokoro in 1952, he runs an English school in Obihiro⁵⁶. He named the "Jewelry Ice" in 2012¹⁴. He has photographed the Harunire tree since 2009 and became Toyokoro's tourism ambassador in 2016⁵⁶.