History
Yamasaki Station opened on 15 October 1904 as a station of the Hokkaido Railway; it is today JR Hokkaido's station H52 on the Hakodate Main Line, in Yamasaki, Yakumo, Futami District, Hokkaidō. The station name reflects local usage: a mountainside near the national road was likened to a cape (saki) and called "Yamasaki" by residents long before the station opened. Yakumo Town, in the northern Oshima Peninsula of the Oshima Subprefecture, sits midway between Hakodate and Muroran. The town was formed in its present shape on 1 October 2005 by a merger of the former Yakumo Town and Kumaishi Town, and is the only town in Japan whose territory fronts both the Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Japan. The Yakumo article notes that the town is also the birthplace of the "wooden carved bear," a quintessential Hokkaidō folk craft.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-25.
Notes
The Yakumo place-name was chosen by Tokugawa Yoshikatsu, the 17th head of the Owari-Tokugawa house, who quoted the ancient waka of Susanoo no Mikoto ("yakumo tatsu Izumo yaegaki…") — when the town's opening fortune was set, the name expressed a wish for a peaceful, idealized community.