Orange and green traffic cones mark the wet asphalt of a narrow Yubari street as light snow falls through a tangle of wires strung between utility poles. Weathered facades of white stucco, corrugated metal and timber line both sides, and a small tree with pale yellow spring blossoms catches the grey light on the left. A ladder leans against the blue-painted lower section of one building.
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Umagae Street sits within Yubari, a city in central Hokkaido roughly 60 kilometres east of Sapporo. The narrow road, the weathered weatherboard buildings on either side, the rendered concrete facades, the power lines crossing overhead: these are the physical textures of a mining-town vernacular built between the 1920s and 1960s to house the workers and families of one of Japan's most productive coalfields. Coal was discovered in the Yubari basin in 1888. Within a decade, mines were operating under the Hokkaido Colliery and Railway Company, and the city grew rapidly through the first half of the twentieth century. By 1960, Yubari's population had reached 107,972 people. Then Japan's energy policy shifted from coal to oil, and the industry that had built the city began its long withdrawal. The last coal mine in Yubari, Mitsubishi Minami-Oyubari Mine, closed on 30 March 1990. The city then borrowed heavily to rebuild itself around tourism. Theme parks, ski resorts, hotels. The debt accumulated quietly behind creative accounting until 2007, when Yubari filed for fiscal rehabilitation with liabilities of approximately 35.3 billion yen. It was the only city in modern Japan to do so. Half the city government resigned within weeks. What the 2016 photograph records is the street as it stood nearly a decade into that rehabilitation. Orange and green traffic cones mark the wet asphalt as light snow falls through a tangle of wires strung between utility poles. A ladder leans against the blue-painted lower section of one building, the ordinary evidence of maintenance. A small tree with pale yellow spring blossoms catches the grey light on the left, and the weathered facades of white stucco, corrugated metal and timber remain standing on both sides. In Yubari's winters, unoccupied buildings face accumulated snow loads that buckle roofs and drive water into timber frames season after season. The buildings that still stand are the ones still in use, or the ones that have not yet reached the point of failure. By March 2026, Yubari's population had fallen to approximately 5,707 residents. The fiscal debt is projected to be repaid by the end of FY2026. Umagae Street in late April, photographed in 2016, belongs to the Streetscapes of Yubari series.
04·FROM THE FIELD NOTES
Orange and green traffic cones mark the wet asphalt of a narrow Yubari street as light snow falls through a tangle of wires strung between utility poles.
Brett Patman
The series
Streetscapes of Yubari
2018 · 54
photographs
Yūbari is a coal-mining city in central Hokkaido. Founded in 1943, its population peaked at around 120,000 in the 1960s and now sits at about 6,400. The colliery closed in the 1980s. The city's attempt to recover through tourism failed; in 2007 it became the first Japanese municipality to declare bankruptcy, owing 35.3 billion yen. These streetscapes were taken between the houses, shops, and schools the town no longer needs - most empty, some half-collapsed, some still in use by the people who stayed.
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