Issue:
January 2025 | Letter from Hokkaido
The year ahead in Japan’s far north will be dominated by tech and tourism
As the Year of the Snake slithers into view, Hokkaido is hoping 2025 will live up to its astrological designation as a year of growth, introspection, and renewal, and a time to make long-term plans and friendships. Especially in Chitose, where the hopes for the renewal of Japan’s semiconductor industry and the growth of Hokkaido’s economy are pinned on hopes of a lasting friendship with the Rapidus semiconductor plant.
This spring, Rapidus is expected to begin pilot production of the world’s first 2 nm semiconductor chips. If all goes well – and that is a very big if – full-scale production will begin in 2027. Over the next couple of months, Rapidus-related personnel as well as a whole semiconductor industry ecosystem of related firms, foreign and Japanese, will be setting up shop in and around Chitose.
It isn't clear how many people from other parts of Japan and around the world will come to live and work on a medium/long-term basis thanks to Rapidus. One of the great questions of 2025 will be whether most rentals will be short- or long-term, and whether those who come will stay just days or weeks in a Chitose or Sapporo area hotel, or months or years at a local apartment or a house. Over the course of this year we may get an answer to those questions.
One industry that will benefit from Rapidus is renewable energy. At the end of 2024, the central government announced its next long-term energy strategy, which calls for between 40% and 50% of Japan’s electricity to be supplied by renewables by 2040, compared with the current national average of about 22%.
While Japan’s fossil-fuel dependent major corporations in heavily fossil-fuel reliant Honshu might suck wind through their teeth, Hokkaido just shrugs its shoulders. In 2024, renewable energy sources provided 40.5% of the prefecture’s electricity needs – the highest proportion of any region in the country.
Raising the total share to around half by 2040 is going to be fairly easy, but not without some tough political problems. Solar and onshore wind development in particular is facing growing opposition in local communities. Tired of outsiders coming in, buying up land, setting up solar panels or windmills, and then abandoning the projects after they fail and forcing locals to spend tax money to deal with the environmental damage, Hokkaido towns are less hospitable to renewable energy developers than they were 10 years ago.
Developers who want to set up shop in the prefecture are likely to find that, in 2025, Hokkaido communities are better informed about renewable energy’s downsides to the local environment and more skeptical of the kind of sales pitches heard back in 2015 about the wonders of renewable energy, the need to use it to combat climate change – and especially how much the project will contribute in tax revenue and employment.
One place where Hokkaido, Rapidus, and renewable energy will get some international attention is at the Osaka/Kansai Expo, which opens in April. The Expo had long been unofficially dubbed by critics as the “METI Expo”, where trade-ministry approved technology and the AI utopian – or dystopian – dreams of their allies in Japan’s major corporations were expected to be on full display. We’ll no doubt hear nothing but good news about Rapidus and renewable energy projects in Hokkaido. As yet, however, it’s not clear how something else Hokkaido is known for - Ainu culture - will be presented and explained at the Expo.
Last year was something of a milestone for positive domestic and international promotion of Ainu culture, with a hit live action film of Golden Kamuy and increased international exchanges between Ainu groups and indigenous groups around the world.
On a personal level, I also saw more “Ainu goods” stores pop up in Sapporo this past year than I’ve ever seen. Not all are run by the Ainu themselves or even have people of Ainu descent working in them. Thus, socially conscious tourists who want to ensure their money spent on anything Ainu-related goes to Ainu groups directly and not a corporation in Tokyo mass-producing Ainu-themed goods need to exercise caution. There are no Ainu-approved lists of local shops and merchants yet that international visitors can refer to, even though an increasing number of Western tourists seem to want them.
This is a golden opportunity for the Expo to ensure that whatever they do with Ainu culture, it directly benefits the Ainu themselves. The Expo has enough problems at the moment without also facing international criticism over how it treats the Ainu. Hokkaido officials might view such criticism as an “Expo problem”, and not their business. But criticism of the way Expo treats the Ainu also means they might find themselves facing more scrutiny throughout 2025 of their own prefecture’s Ainu policies than would have been the case without Expo.
Finally, for FCCJ members who are ski bums and looking to get their editors or someone else to fund a “reporting trip” to Hokkaido this winter, the inside word is: stay away from vastly overcrowded, overpriced Niseko. Central Hokkaido, especially the Asahikawa, Higashikawa, and Furano areas, is said to be the place to go for less-crowded slopes and ski trails and more reasonably priced accommodations, although it, too, has been discovered and it’s harder to book a room than it was last year. Is Central Hokkaido the next Niseko? Check this corner at the end of 2025 to find out.
Eric Johnston is the Senior National Correspondent for the Japan Times. Views expressed within are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Japan Times.
