Shopfront

A green beauty salon sign remains fixed to the upper facade of a two-storey commercial building in Yubari, Hokkaido. Below it, the awning has torn away and collapsed. Curtains hang behind cracked glass. The shopfront is gutted. Yubari's coal industry began in 1888 when geologist Ichitaro Ban identified the basin's major seam. By the 1960 national census, the city's population had reached 107,972, sustained by dozens of operating mines and the commercial and residential fabric that grew around them. Japan's energy policy shift from coal to oil began that same year. The last mine, Mitsubishi Minami-Oyubari, closed on 30 March 1990, ending a century of extraction. In 2007, Yubari became the only city in modern Japan to file for fiscal rehabilitation, carrying a debt of approximately 35.3 billion yen. The population by March 2026 sat at around 5,707. The shopfronts that once served a city of over 100,000 now stand largely empty across the Honcho shopping street and surrounding commercial strips. Snow load is the primary physical force reshaping unoccupied buildings: several metres of snowfall each Hokkaido winter buckle roofs, drive water into timber frames, and accelerate structural failure year on year. The awning visible in this frame did not survive that process intact. What the photograph records is not dramatic collapse but something quieter: a business that closed, a building that has continued to deteriorate, and a sign that has not yet come down. The salon's green lettering still reads clearly against the facade. Everything below it tells a different story. Photographed in 2016 as part of the Streetscapes of Yubari series.