Pioneer's Garden

Earth and straight line

Ebeotsu is located in a gently hilly area about an hour and a half from downtown Sapporo by car or rail, and its main industry is agriculture. At the same time, this area is a vast flatland along the Ishikari River, which flows through the central Hokkaido. National Route 12, a major road, runs north-northeast along the border where the vast slope gently descends from east-southeast to west-northwest to flatten out, forming a residential area of about 1 km in both directions and about 1.5 km in length. It is a 10-minute drive from the center of the neighboring city of Takigawa, which is connected by National Route 12 and a railroad (JR Hakodate Main Line). These have been the lifelines of the village since its opening, and large trucks can be seen frequently coming and going on the former.

Coming from Furano by car, we took a route westward down the hilly terrain to the east of the town. As we proceeded along the gently sloping straight road at the foot of the hill, the view opened as the gradient gradually became steeper, and the beautiful landscape of the plains along the Ishikari River appeared before our eyes. As we descend the hill and cross Route 12, we are suddenly caught in a roadside landscape. This was the center of the town of Ebeotsu.

My first impression of Ebeotsu was that it was a town you could easily pass by. When you are driving along the road, you can see the buildings at the end of the road and along the road, but you cannot see the town spreading out behind them, and probably do not care about it. However, behind them are hidden beautiful gardens that do not exist anywhere else.

Modern times of the “Tondenhei” town

In Ebeotsu, which was established in 1894 as a village for Tondenhei (the soldiers for developing and guarding Hokkaido), people have been cultivating fields and apples since its settlement. After the abolition of the Tondenhei system, at the end of the Meiji period, paddy field cultivation began, and the population also increased as the number of people turning to commerce increased rapidly. At the end of the Taisho period, the introduction of irrigation technology led to a large expansion of the rice paddies.

Later, the end of the war brought many repatriates and evacuees to the area, and this triggered rapid urbanization. During the period of rapid economic growth from the 1970s to the 1980s, roads and parks were developed through urban planning projects, and residential development was promoted as a suburb of Takikawa City.

On the other hand, the concentration of economic activity in the industrialized Takikawa city, the spread of automobiles, and changes in the industrial structure of the retail industry have led to the decline of commerce in Ebeotsu, which is only one train stop away from Takikawa city center for better or worse. Currently, almost all stores and restaurants, including those on the shopping street in front of the station, are closed for business. However, two convenience stores and a pharmacy are lined up along the national highway, so people will be able to get the bare necessities of life in time. While relying on the city of Takikawa for daily living functions and secondary and higher education, the town has a full range of businesses for the elderly, as evidenced by the presence of one large-scale senior care facility each in the public and private sectors and one hospital.

At its peak in the 1965s, Takikawa had about 630 hectares of apple orchards in the hills in the eastern part of the town. Although the scale of these farms has shrunk, the inland climate with its large temperature differences has allowed the cultivation of high-quality apples known as “Ebeotsu Apple”.

Development as a suburban residential area

Ebeotsu is spread out in a rectangular shape with its longitudinal axis roughly north-south, centered on the intersection of National Route 12 and the Ebe Otsu-Akahira line. The town is evenly divided by several east-west streets and several north-south avenues that bypass them, and each grid is lined with houses facing the east-west streets. However, this town layout did not exist from the beginning, but was planned gradually as farmland was converted to residential land.

The area to the north of the Ebeotsu Shrine was the site of a village in the days of the Tondenhei, and it is the only place that retains a complexly shaped site division that does not follow the grid. The Ebeotsu Station was built in front of the village, and after the abolition of the Tondenhei system, a shopping district developed in front of the station, as mentioned above.

Most of the land, except for the shopping area, was farmland until the prewar period, but the lowlands on the west side of the national highway developed relatively quickly, and in the 1950s and 1960s the fields adjacent to the shopping area were converted to residential areas in turn. In most of them, houses were built on the front of the strip of land facing the road, with fields behind them.

In the early 1960s, road construction began on a large former military training camp to the north of above fields, and the land was subsequently converted into agricultural cooperative collection sites, agricultural high school sites, low-rise apartment complexes, and residential areas. Although the residential area at the northern end of the town was new and the road was still under construction, it appeared to be mainly occupied by young families.

On the other hand, on the east side of National Route 12, until before the war, rice paddies were spread in the lowlands on the west side and apple orchards were spread out on the hills on the east side, bordered by the Sorachi water line. Postwar aerial photographs show that the apple orchards extended beyond the irrigation water line, but since the late 1970s, these farmlands have gradually been converted to residential areas.

On the east side of the irrigation canal, a north-south agricultural road runs through the center of the apple orchards that once spread out. Along the road, the houses of the apple farmers were spaced evenly in relation to the apple orchards, but the area has not been developed much, and the old spatial structure remains to this day. Some of the houses still retain their original apple storage. Now that the apple orchards are gone, half of them are buried under the ground, exposing a special structure with a chimney-like air intake and exhaust tower on a short green carpet. And farmlands spread behind those houses. Most of the apple orchards on the hillside have been turned into fields, and some into a natural park.

Continuous of rich vacant lots

One of the factors that make the landscape of Ebeotsu so special is probably its large amount of unused land. As mentioned earlier, in the eastern hilly area, former apple orchards were cleared to make way for residential development, but there are only a few areas that have actually been developed, and in some places, there are large vacant lots left behind the townscape. These vacant lots are used as farmland, but when we visited, they had been turned into very pleasant open spaces with bright green lawns all over them. These vacant lots are connected to the backyards and fields of the houses, so that the houses seen through the vacant lots become a part of the residents' daily landscape. This balanced landscape of residential and vacant land reminds us of the history of Hokkaidō's vast nature, which has been transformed into a place for human habitation, and of the virgin forests that lie beyond this hilly terrain.

Unused and vacant land is also an important landscape element in the lowlands west of the national highway. These are wild gardens of many kinds of small flowers, regardless of the size of the lot, giving a lively impression to the town. In Hokkaidō, tall plants such as the tall goldenrod do not thrive, and the native butterbur and other short plants and flowers frame the entire landscape, creating an open and friendly atmosphere. Due to its location in a cold region, the fact that these plants are annuals and return to the cleared land once a year is an important condition that prevents the presence of many vacant lots from becoming stressful for the residents.

Unfortunately, the number of vacant lots in the town is on the increase due to the declining birthrate and aging population, as well as a decrease in population due to people moving out to the cities. However, the increase in the number of vacant lots and the connection of these lots are creating a visual continuity that has never existed before. This openness to the eye can be seen in various places in the town, and above all, when the flowers and plants are in full bloom, the town becomes a large garden for the eyes of passersby, making the current landscape of Ebeotsu even more open and joyful than before.

Overlapping small gardens

On the other hand, there are also numerous beautifully landscaped private gardens. In Ebeotsu, the integrated postwar residential development with more room in front of dwellings created the potential for gardening, and it is thought that the aesthetic consciousness and the style of interaction in the neighborhood community through gardening increased the importance of gardening in each household. It is interesting to note that the character of the gardens differed from one residential area to another.

In the residential area to the west of the Central Children's Park, which is symmetrically located across the national highway from the Ebeotsu Shrine, there are many gardens that are full of wild flavor, with a three-dimensional, multi-layered composition of plants and wildflowers. They are growing in abundance and overflowing onto the street. Small gardens with colorful flowers and plants in the backyards of shopping malls directly facing the same park are visually continuous with the park, giving them a picturesque atmosphere. What these gardens have in common is the roughness created by the ambiguous relationship between public space and private land use.

In contrast to the rough and rugged beauty of many of the gardens in the lowlands on the west side of the city, many of the gardens in the hills on the east side of the city have a relatively calm and orderly beauty, with many trees. While the former gardens are created by the residents themselves, the latter seem to be the work of gardeners.

These small but beautiful gardens and large wild gardens are loosely connected beyond the boundary between public and private, creating an atmosphere as if the entire town were a single garden.

Toward a de-marketed paradise

Ebeotsu could be shown to be a town that is a paradise-like place, free from clamor and agitation. Municipal policies that seek to suffice facilities for the elderly seem to be an appropriate response to an era of declining population. In this age of transportation and logistics, not all towns necessarily need to be commercially active. The next necessary action is to consider what is needed in a town to enhance childcare. The town already has beautiful landscapes and rich environments for children to grow up healthy.

June 30, 2022