290px, Awaiwa on Teuri Island 290px, Haboro town center area is a

town A town is a type of a human settlement, generally larger than a village but smaller than a city. The criteria for distinguishing a town vary globally, often depending on factors such as population size, economic character, administrative stat ...

located in

Rumoi Subprefecture is a Subprefectures of Hokkaido, subprefecture of Hokkaido, Hokkaido Prefecture, Japan. As of 2011, it had a population of 52,627 and an area of . The population density of the subprefecture, 13 people per km2, is very low compared to the rest o ...

Hokkaido is the list of islands of Japan by area, second-largest island of Japan and comprises the largest and northernmost prefectures of Japan, prefecture, making up its own list of regions of Japan, region. The Tsugaru Strait separates Hokkaidō fr ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

., the town had an estimated

population Population is a set of humans or other organisms in a given region or area. Governments conduct a census to quantify the resident population size within a given jurisdiction. The term is also applied to non-human animals, microorganisms, and pl ...

of 5,932 in 3315 households, and a

population density Population density (in agriculture: Standing stock (disambiguation), standing stock or plant density) is a measurement of population per unit land area. It is mostly applied to humans, but sometimes to other living organisms too. It is a key geog ...

of 13 people per km². The total area of the town is .

Geography

Haboro faces the

Sea of Japan The Sea of Japan is the marginal sea between the Japanese archipelago, Sakhalin, the Korean Peninsula, and the mainland of the Russian Far East. The Japanese archipelago separates the sea from the Pacific Ocean. Like the Mediterranean Sea, it ...

. Much of the area of the town is within the Teshio Mountains, and much of the town is protected as a national forest. Mount Pisshiri is the highest point in the city at . Two rivers cross the town: the Haboro and the Chikubetsu.

Islands

The municipality of Haboro includes two sparsely populated islands in the Sea of Japan. * Yagishiri Island (), population 273, is located northwest of Haboro Bay, and is known for its dense forests. *

Teuri Island Teuri Island (天売島 Teuri-tō) is an island in the Sea of Japan 30 km west of Haboro port in Haboro, Tomamae District, in the Rumoi Subprefecture in Hokkaido. The Island, along with neighboring Yagishiri island on its east side, belo ...

, population 366, is located west of Yagashiri, and the two islands are separated by the Musashi Channel. Teuri covers , and is protected as a bird sanctuary.

Neighboring municipalities

* Rumoi Subprefecture ** Tomamae District： Tomamae, Shosanbetsu ** Teshio District： Enbetsu * Kamikawa Subprefecture ** Uryū District： Horokanai

Climate

Haboro has a

humid continental climate A humid continental climate is a climatic region defined by Russo-German climatologist Wladimir Köppen in 1900, typified by four distinct seasons and large seasonal temperature differences, with warm to hot (and often humid) summers, and cold ...

(

Köppen climate classification The Köppen climate classification divides Earth climates into five main climate groups, with each group being divided based on patterns of seasonal precipitation and temperature. The five main groups are ''A'' (tropical), ''B'' (arid), ''C'' (te ...

''Dfb'') with warm summers and cold winters. Precipitation is high throughout the year; the months from August to December are wetter than the rest of the year. The highest temperature recorded was on August 1, 2021. The coldest temperature ever recorded was on 27 January 1923.

Demographics

Per Japanese census data, the population of Haboro is as shown below. The town is in a long period of sustained population loss.

History

Haboro village was established in 1894. The town's full-scale development began in the mid-

Meiji period The was an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868, to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonizatio ...

, later than the neighboring towns of Tomamae and Shosanbetsu, but since the discovery of the Haboro Coal Mine, which produced high-quality coal, in the Taisho period, it developed into a monoculture settlement centered on coal. Haboro was officially designated a town in 1921. The villages of Teuri and Yagishiri were merged into Haboro in 1955 and 1959, respectively. In the 1965 census, the town had a population of 30,266 and 6,840 households, and flourished as one of the leading coal mining towns in Hokkaido and the country. However, since the mine closed in 1971, depopulation has been significant.

Etymology

The name of the town is from the

Ainu language Ainu (, ), or more precisely Hokkaido Ainu (), is a language spoken by a few elderly members of the Ainu people on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. It is a member of the Ainu language family, itself considered a language family isola ...

, but of uncertain origin. Haboro may have originated with the Ainu language word ''hapuru'', meaning "a soft sound", or ''haporopetsu'', meaning "the basin of a large river". In Japanese, the name of the town is written with

ateji In modern Japanese, principally refers to kanji used to phonetically represent native or borrowed words with less regard to the underlying meaning of the characters. This is similar to in Old Japanese. Conversely, also refers to kanji used s ...

, or

kanji are logographic Chinese characters, adapted from Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script, used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are ...

characters used to phonetically represent native or borrowed words. The first, , means "feather" or "wings", and the second, , means "curtain" or "cloth".

Government

Haboro has a mayor-council form of government with a directly elected mayor and a

unicameral Unicameralism (from ''uni''- "one" + Latin ''camera'' "chamber") is a type of legislature consisting of one house or assembly that legislates and votes as one. Unicameralism has become an increasingly common type of legislature, making up nearly ...

town council of nine members. Haboro, as part of Rumoi sub-prefecture, contributes one member to the Hokkaidō Prefectural Assembly. In terms of national politics, the town is part of the Hokkaidō 10th district of the

lower house A lower house is the lower chamber of a bicameral legislature, where the other chamber is the upper house. Although styled as "below" the upper house, in many legislatures worldwide, the lower house has come to wield more power or otherwise e ...

of the

Diet of Japan , transcription_name = ''Kokkai'' , legislature = 215th Session of the National Diet , coa_pic = Flag of Japan.svg , house_type = Bicameral , houses = , foundation=29 November 1890(), leader1_type ...

Economy

The local economy of Haboro is centered on

commercial fishing Commercial fishing is the activity of catching fish and other seafood for Commerce, commercial Profit (economics), profit, mostly from wild fisheries. It provides a large quantity of food to many countries around the world, but those who practice ...

and agriculture, and there are attempts to develop the tourism industry, taking advantage of the coal mine remnants and the Shokanbetsu-Teuri-Yagishiri Quasi-National Park

Education

Haboro has three public elementary schools and three public junior high schools operated by the town government, and two public high schoolsoperated by the Hokkaidō Board of Education.

High schools

* Haboro Senior High School * Teuri Senior High School

Junior high schools

* Haboro Junior High School * Teuri Junior High School * Yagishiri Junior High School

Elementary school

* Haboro Elementary School * Teuri Elementary School * Yagishiri Elementary School

Transportation

Railway

Haboro was originally connected to other areas of Hokkaido by rail. The

Japanese National Railways The , abbreviated JNR or , was the business entity that operated Japan's national railway network from 1949 to 1987. Network Railways As of June 1, 1949, the date of establishment of JNR, it operated of narrow gauge () railways in all 46 pre ...

Haboro Line extended 141.1 km between Rumoi and Horonobe. Construction on the line dated to 1927, but it was discontinued in 1987 with the establishment of

JR Hokkaido The is one of the constituent companies of the Japan Railways Group (JR Group), and is often referred to by its official abbreviation: . It operates intercity and local rail services in Hokkaido, Japan. The company introduced Kitaca, a smart c ...

during the privatization of Japanese National Railways.

Highway

Haboro is crossed by National Route 232, a national highway of Japan that ranges across western Hokkaido between Wakkanai and Rumoi. Teuri and Yagishiri have a single road surrounding the island.

Ferry

The islands of Yagishiri and Teuri are served by ferry from the Port of Haboro.

Port of Haboro

The Port of Haboro was established in March 1953. It is administered by the town.

Mascot

Haboro's mascot is . He is a fashionable

common murre The common murre or common guillemot (''Uria aalge'') is a large auk. It has a Subarctic, circumpolar distribution, occurring in low-Arctic and boreal waters in the North Atlantic and North Pacific. It spends most of its time at sea, only coming ...

. He contributes to the town by promoting sightseeing and certain events. He eats sand eels. As an

auk Auks or alcids are birds of the family Alcidae in the order Charadriiformes. The alcid family includes the Uria, murres, guillemots, Aethia, auklets, puffins, and Brachyramphus, murrelets. The family contains 25 extant or recently extinct speci ...

, he is a skilled swimmer. He owns a hat collection (of which his most favourite is his shrimp toque). Children often mistake him for a penguin.

References

External links

*
Official Website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Haboro, Hokkaido Towns in Hokkaido Rumoi Subprefecture Populated coastal places in Japan