Clock Tower

A clock tower stands on the central square of Yubari, Hokkaido, a four-faced clock mounted on a slim concrete tower roughly fifteen metres tall. The tower is painted pale beige, with a small pyramidal roof. Three of the four clock faces are visible in the photograph; the hands have stopped at different times on each face. The square around the base of the tower has paving stones, a few benches, and an empty flagpole. There is nobody on the square. A municipal building sits on one side of the square; a closed business sits on the other.

The clock tower was built as a civic landmark when Yubari was still a functioning city of tens of thousands. Its placement at the centre of the square reflected the town's sense of itself as a place where civic time mattered: shifts at the mines, school hours, train timetables, business hours. Yubari declared bankruptcy in 2007 with debts of more than $US200 million, the largest municipal bankruptcy in Japanese history. Most civic services were cut to the bone. The clock tower stopped being maintained at some point in the years that followed. The clocks have stopped on different times because they were never wound up together at the end.