Old vs New

Yubari's residential streets were built in layers. The oldest surviving fabric is timber-frame housing from the mining boom years, clad in corrugated steel that has spent decades absorbing Hokkaido winters. Walls rust, panels buckle, and the weight of accumulated snow works steadily on any roof that is no longer being maintained. These buildings were constructed for a city at full capacity, housing the workers and families who kept as many as 24 mines running simultaneously at the industry's peak. That city reached a registered population of approximately 116,908 in April 1960. By the 2020 national census, the figure was 7,334. By March 2026, city estimates put the remaining population at around 5,707. The arithmetic of that decline is visible in almost every block: boarded shopfronts, concrete slabs where buildings once stood, and occupied houses sitting alongside structures that have not been heated in years. What this photograph records is something specific to Yubari's more recent history. Alongside the ageing timber-frame building stands a newer, utilitarian structure, the kind of construction that has appeared in parts of the city as fiscal reconstruction and compact city planning have slowly redirected resources toward a smaller, more concentrated urban core. Since filing for fiscal rehabilitation in March 2007 with debts of approximately 35.3 billion yen, Yubari has been working to consolidate its remaining population around the Shimizusawa district, relocating services, building community infrastructure, and replacing the sprawling footprint of a mining-era city with something scaled to the people who remain. The two buildings in this frame do not acknowledge each other. The older structure carries the texture of everything that preceded the collapse. The newer one is indifferent to it. Between them, the street is largely empty. Photographed in 2016.