Otaru City Museum Director Naoaki Ishikawa Updated April 10, 2021

In 1974, just before Otaru was transformed into a tourist city, a special feature on Otaru was published on the front page of the well-known family magazine Kurashi no Techo. Written at a time when the long-running "canal debate" was coming to a definitive end, this reportage is a must-read piece depicting Otaru in its "declining period."

It begins with a bulleted list of Otaru's characteristics: "A town of slopes / A town of canals and stone warehouses / (omitted) / A ski town / A town of Western lanterns / A town of markets / And a town in decline" (Kurashi no Techo Editorial Department, 1974). In fact, this is a passage from a national magazine, at an early stage when glass was used to describe Otaru. Moreover, the use of the word "Western lantern" is key. When did Otaru become known as the "town of glass"?

The Otaru City Library has statistical books dating back to 1899, when Otaru Ward was established. They contain tables summarizing the trends and production values ​​of each industry, but there is no mention of the "glass manufacturing industry."

At the time, Otaru was known as "the leading economic city in northern Japan," and a wide variety of goods were traded there, but the word "glass" cannot be found in either the manufacturing or distribution industries. Of course, if you look at a commercial directory or similar, you can find at least seven stores in the Taisho era that dealt in glass products or manufactured and sold glass. Among these is the name "Kondo Glass Shop."

Kitaichi Glass, a famous glass shop in Otaru, was originally called Asahara Glass, and was founded by Fukuoka native Hisakichi Asahara in 1901. This means that there is no doubt that glass shops existed, but it is assumed that they were a minor industry classified as "other" in Otaru at the time.

For example, in the directory at the end of the Otaru guidebook published in 1914, two people, Hisakichi Asahara and Ushikichi Fujii, are listed as "glass manufacturing workers," but these are just two people out of a total of approximately 700 people, or 0.3%. Within the same manufacturing industry, there are 16 and 7 people listed for alcohol, soy sauce, and miso, respectively. However, Otaru at this time had the resources needed for many glass products.

Until plastic containers became the primary packaging material in the latter half of the 20th century, most containers for liquids and powders were made of glass. At the time, Otaru was a logistics hub with many wholesalers, and a large amount of packaging material was needed.

In the Taisho period business directories and telephone directories, the occupation of "box maker" can be found. There is no doubt that there was a large demand for glass products as packaging materials and containers. Asahara Glass also manufactured glass containers and sold many products. However, Otaru's overall economic scale was so large that it was not included in the statistics.

Furthermore, because Asahara Glass had such a large-scale manufacturing track record, it is likely that the Hokkaido government commissioned Asahara Glass to manufacture and develop glass floats. The production of floats for fishing nets began in 1910, and it is not the case that Otaru glass has its roots in floats, as is commonly believed, but rather that the thriving production of glass containers led to the production of floats.

This is also a commonly-held belief, but the statement that "they were used in the nets of herring fishing, which was popular at the time," is not accurate. Looking at photographs and videos from the postwar period, the floats for herring fishing nets are mostly made of wood ("aba"). Glass floats, which have greater buoyancy, were often used in larger-scale deep-sea fishing.

Herring catches began to decline sharply around the beginning of the Showa era, but instead, North Pacific fishing in areas such as Kamchatka became popular, and herring began to be used there, leading to further demand growth.

However, after the war, the North Pacific fishing industry went into decline, and the arrival of plastic floats made things even worse. As mentioned above, the containers that were the foundation of glass manufacturing were also replaced by plastic, and glass manufacturing entered a difficult period.

In the 1970s, Otaru, a city long considered to be in decline, was hit by a "canal debate" that divided citizens into those in favor of reclamation and those in favor of preservation. The preservation movement, which arose in a declining economic city, became a social phenomenon that was also picked up by the media on Honshu.

At the time, travel to Hokkaido was booming, especially among the younger generation, and an increasing number of young people began to visit the canal and Otaru buildings that had been the scene of the controversy. These young people then "discovered" Asahara Glass, a small lamp shop in front of the station that had changed its name to Kitaichi Glass.

Kenzo Asahara, who took over the store at a young age, "added design to lamps that had previously been purely practical" (Kenzo Asahara's statement in the Hokkaido Shimbun newspaper in 2011), and the lamps became popular with many tourists as "practical and stylish souvenirs of Otaru."

Furthermore, Mr. Asahara analyzed the needs of tourists and came up with a plan to turn a timber-framed stone warehouse near the canal into a store. Sakaimachi, which is now the center of tourism, was then an area consisting of a wholesale district and a warehouse district, and was not a place that ordinary citizens would visit. Moreover, there had never been an example of reusing a 100-year-old building, and many people said that it was "reckless." This warehouse is now Kitaichi Glass Building No. 3, and has become a representative tourist spot in Sakaimachi and Otaru.

This success story showed the business people, many of whom were in favor of land reclamation, the success story of "old buildings are assets," and it sparked a major trend toward the reuse of buildings and even the preservation of parts of the Otaru Canal.

Otaru's glass industry, which was once in decline, has become a major force in reviving the town from its decline. Nowadays, an increasing number of glass artists are moving to Otaru as a place for creative activities. Behind the beauty of Otaru's glasswork lies the weight of history.

References: Hokkaido Shimbun 2011 "My History: Kitaichi Glass President Kenzo Asahara" (Hokkaido Shimbun Evening Edition); Kurashi no Techo Editorial Department 1984 "An Invitation to Otaru, a Town of Snow, Markets, and Hills" (Kurashi no Techo 2nd Century No. 86)

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