Tsurui 鶴居村

• A Japanese name, not an Ainu one: when the village was created in 1937 it took the name Tsurui, "where cranes dwell", because it was the habitat and breeding ground of the red-crowned crane, a natural monument⁸. The village's own explanation is simply "Tsurui because the cranes are here" (鶴が居るから鶴居村)¹⁰.
• Hokkaido Government's Ainu place-name list: the list gives the meaning "habitat of the red-crowned crane" and judges the name to be Japanese, with its highest confidence level (A), citing the place-name scholar Yamada Hidezō¹⁹. The Most Beautiful Villages union also points out that, unlike most Hokkaido place names, Tsurui's name does not come from Ainu¹³.
• Ainu names in the district: the Setsuri (雪裡) river and district come from Ainu. The same list records set-cir, "nest–bird". Yamada recorded Yae Kurō's account that a giant bird once nested on a cliff in the river's middle reaches. An older entry credited to Nagata gives set-cir-us-i, "place with many nests (birds)", explained as "a place with many mountain hawk-eagles (クマタカ)". Either way, the name is thought to come from set-cir²⁰.
• The crane in Ainu: the Ainu called the crane sarurun kamuy (サルルンカムイ), "god of the marsh"²¹.

• Prehistory: in 2003, excavation began on Late Jōmon pottery fragments found along Prefectural Route 53⁸.
• 1885–1898: 27 households moved from Moshiriya (茂尻矢) in Kushiro to farm at Shimo-Setsuri, which the village counts as its beginning. A joint administrative office (戸長役場) for Akan District opened there in 1887 and moved to Shitakara in 1898⁸.
• 1916–1920s: 11 households of independent settlers came from Iwate and Kagawa prefectures in 1916. Group settlers from across Honshu followed until the area had about 680 households⁸. Organized group settlement began in 1921, and after the 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake, disaster victims were encouraged to settle in Hokkaido⁹.
• 1924: the Hokkaido Government game official Saitō Haruji, guided by the rancher Miyajima Tokusaburō and his son Toshio, found a dozen or so cranes near the Chiruwatsunai River. The species had been thought extinct, and the area became a no-hunting zone the next year¹².
• 1925–1943: a horse-drawn colonial light railway (殖民軌道) was built. It had a 28.8 km main line from Shin-Fuji on the Nemuro Main Line to Naka-Setsuri and a 15.5 km branch from Shimo-Hororo to Kami-Hororo. Work began in 1925, and the line was completed in 1927, formally opened in 1929 and extended to Shin-Hororo in 1943⁹. The village chronology instead dates the start of work to 1927 and the opening to 1928, and gives the branch as 15.4 km⁸.
• 1935–1937: the crane breeding grounds were designated a natural monument on 27 August 1935⁸⁹. On 1 April 1937, Tsurui Village was created⁸.
• 1952: the cranes and their Kushiro breeding grounds became a special natural monument on 29 March⁸. That year the Hokkaido Government's first survey counted only 33 cranes. On 15 December, Hororo Elementary School pupils, who had built stacks (nio) of dent corn, succeeded in feeding the cranes for the first time. Yamazaki Sadajirō in Akan succeeded at about the same time¹².
• 1953–1968: the line became the village-run Tsurui Village Railway (鶴居村営軌道). In 1956 it introduced the first self-propelled diesel railcar on any Hokkaido simple railway. Better roads and buses ended services in August 1967, and the line was abolished in 1968⁹.
• 1960s: the turn to dairy: cold-summer crop failures and falling postwar demand for horses hit the village's early crop and horse farming. From the early 1960s farmers switched to dairying¹³. Milk output passed 20,000 t in 1976, 40,000 t in 1991 and 60,000 t in 2008⁸.
• 1962–1987: the feeding grounds: Shimo-Setsuri Elementary pupils began feeding cranes in 1962. From about 1965, Watanabe Yoshiaki and Tome, who had provided the pasture, took over for about half a century at what became Tsurumidai. Itō Yoshitaka began feeding on his farm in 1966¹², and the Wild Bird Society of Japan opened its sanctuary on his land in 1987²².
• 1980–2008:
  • 1980: a hot-spring well was drilled, and Kushiro Marsh was registered under the Ramsar Convention (17 June).
  • 1982: Prince Philip visited.
  • 1987: Kushiro-shitsugen National Park was designated (31 July).
  • 2006: the Tsurui and Hororo farm cooperatives merged with those of Shiranuka and Onbetsu into JA Kushiro Tanchō, headquartered in Tsurui.
  • 2007: the village's cheese won the national prize.
  • 2008: Tsurui joined the Most Beautiful Villages union⁸.
• 2016–2025:
  • 2016: the Tsurubō no Ie shop opened.
  • 2017: Tsurui was named a Biomass Industry City.
  • 2018: the light railway became Hokkaido Heritage⁸.
  • 2022: Brasserie Knot opened in the former Mosetsuri Elementary School⁹, and the village declared itself a Zero Carbon City (8 March)⁸.
  • December 2024: the village abandoned its plan to run a biogas plant²³.
  • February 2025: a forum marked 100 years since the cranes' rediscovery⁸.
  • 31 March 2025: Hororo Elementary and Junior High School closed².

• Location and landforms: Tsurui lies near the centre of Kushiro Subprefecture, between Lake Akan and the Kushiro Marsh⁹. The village is made up of three plains, Setsuri, Hororo and Kuchoro (久著呂). They follow the Setsuri, Hororo and Kuchoro rivers, which rise in the hills of the Akan caldera's outer rim. Elevations range from 3.6 m in the southern marshland to 812 m in primeval forest at the foot of the Akan mountains. Farmland lies between 40 and 200 m¹⁰.
• Kushiro-shitsugen National Park: Japan's 28th national park, designated in 1987, protects Japan's largest wetland and covers about 28,788 ha⁹. About 30% of the park lies in Tsurui⁷. The marsh was sea about 6,000 years ago⁹. Kirakotan Cape (キラコタン岬), one of the places where the cranes were rediscovered, is a special protection zone of the park. It can be reached only on foot or horseback and overlooks the meanders of the Chiruwatsunai River¹⁵⁹. Neighbouring Miyajima Cape (宮島岬) is named for the headland it was when the marsh was sea, and it looks out over the Kushiro River's meanders¹⁵.
• Forest: about 64% of the village is forest⁷. The forests lie in the marsh's upper catchment. Since 2010 the Tsurui forestry cooperative has followed European models of sustainable forestry, building well-drained European-style work roads that limit soil runoff into the wetland⁹.
• Climate: the village describes a cool inland climate. Summers are relatively mild, though sea fog from off Kushiro sometimes rolls in. Winters bring little snow and many clear days. Winds blow mostly from the south in summer and from the north-west in winter¹⁰. Normals for 1991–2020 at the Tsurui weather station (38 m above sea level²) are:
  • mean annual temperature 5.9 °C;
  • January mean −7.1 °C, with an average daily low of −13.9 °C;
  • August mean 18.7 °C, with an average daily high of 23.7 °C;
  • 1,203.6 mm of precipitation, 332 cm of snowfall and 1,768 hours of sunshine a year²⁴.
• Records at the station (temperatures since 1977): 35.1 °C on 7 August 2010 and 8 August 1994, and −27.2 °C on 25 January 1985. The deepest snow recorded was 108 cm, on 24 March 2000²⁵.

• Dairy:
  • FY2016 figures: 77 dairy farms (71 shipping milk), 9,065 ha of farmland, 12,413 dairy cattle (7,133 cows that had calved) and 61,907 t of raw milk. That is about 8,680 kg per cow and 872 t per farm¹⁶.
  • In 1955 there were 475 dairy farms producing 1,812 t¹⁶.
  • Since 1986 the village has paid a milk-quality bonus of up to ¥1 per kg of high-quality milk. A dairy-helper scheme started in 1991 so that farm families can take days off¹⁶.
  • Large incorporated farms use ICT tools such as rotary milking robots. Two TMR centres make and deliver mixed feed to farms⁹.
• Forestry is the village's second main industry. Local timber goes into lumber, firewood and charcoal, and sawdust from a village facility is used as bedding in cattle barns⁹.
• Tourism:
  • FY2025 visitors: 433,800, down 5.4% from 458,700 in FY2024. Only 9,200 of them stayed overnight²⁶.
  • Foreign overnight guests: 893, up from 593 the year before. They peaked in February, the height of crane season, with 315²⁶.
• Population and settlement:
  • Spacious housing lots at Shimo-Hororo, close to Kushiro Airport, have drawn young families from across Japan².
  • Child support in the 2024 village overview includes free school meals, free medical care to age 18, and birth bonuses of ¥100,000 for a first child, ¥200,000 for a second and ¥300,000 for a third or later, plus ¥50,000 on starting elementary school⁹.
  • Even so, the preliminary 2025 Census shows a 6.2% fall since 2020³.
• Energy: Tsurui was designated a Biomass Industry City in 2017⁸. The village took over a biogas plant from a private company. The plant was built in 2017 with a 600 kW methane generator, but its membrane was never finished. In December 2024 the village dropped its own plan to run the plant, and it is now looking for another operator²³.

The village's "four big events" are run by the Tsurui Furusato Matsuri executive committee³³.

• Museums: Furusato Jōhōkan "Minakuru" (ふるさと情報館みなくる, Tsurui-higashi 5-3) combines a library with exhibits on dairy farming, cranes and the marsh⁹. Outside it displays a diesel locomotive, a self-propelled railcar and a covered goods wagon that ran on the village railway in the late 1950s and early 1960s⁹. It is open 10:00–18:15 and closed 29 December–3 January and during maintenance closures³⁸.
• Crane culture: local schools have long taken part in conservation. Pupils build nio (stacks of dent-corn stalks) as feeding markers and join the winter census⁹.
• Shrines: the tourism guide describes Tsurui Shrine (鶴居神社), in the village centre, as a "power spot" for finding love¹⁷.
• Pop culture: a catchphrase of Komawari-kun in the manga Gaki Deka is "The cranes are coming from Tsurui Village!" (鶴居村からツルが来るぅ～)².

Little Ainu history specific to Tsurui is documented in the sources consulted. The clearest traces are place names such as Setsuri (set-cir, "nest–bird")²⁰ and the Ainu name for the crane, sarurun kamuy, "god of the marsh", which the village and its tourism association still use²¹¹². Late Jōmon pottery fragments have been excavated along Prefectural Route 53⁸. The sources consulted list no Ainu cultural facility in the village.

No formal sister-city agreements were found. The village has these exchange ties:

• Kooragang and other wetlands, Australia: a sister-wetland agreement signed in November 1994⁸.
• Tsurui schools in Hyōgo Prefecture: Tsurui Elementary became a sister school of Tsurui Elementary in Hyōgo in April 1989, and village junior-high students visited Tsurui Junior High in Ichikawa Town, Hyōgo, in 2000⁸.
• Akaigawa: since 2022, junior-high students have made exchange visits to this fellow member of the Most Beautiful Villages union⁹.
• Kushiro City: a "settlement and self-reliance zone" agreement (定住自立圏形成協定) signed in June 2010⁸.

• Itō Yoshitaka (伊藤良孝, 1919–2000): a dairy farmer from Iwate who fed cranes from 1966 and opened about 13 ha of his land for the Wild Bird Society's sanctuary²²¹²².
• Watanabe Tome (渡部トメ): known as the "crane grandmother". She and her husband Yoshiaki fed cranes at Tsurumidai every winter day for about half a century, and she died aged 99¹².
• Kitamura Naoto (北村直人): a Tsurui-born veterinarian and former member of the House of Representatives².
• Manjū Daiteikoku (まんじゅう大帝国): a comedy duo with a Tsurui-born member; the duo performed at the 2026 Nōryō Matsuri²³⁴.