The Belt Tunnel's West Portal: A Concrete Mouth Built for a Conveyor
Of the surviving pieces of Yubari's Takamatsu spoil line, this one is a fragment rather than a whole structure. What remains and carries protection is the west portal of the belt tunnel, the concrete frame at the western mouth of a bore that once housed a moving conveyor belt. The portal measures 8.9 metres wide and 3.3 metres high, and behind it the tunnel itself was cut with a semicircular arch section about 2.5 metres in diameter.
The name explains the function. While the skip tunnel further east carried rolling iron cars, this tunnel held a belt conveyor, a continuous moving band that carried waste rock through the hill without the start-and-stop of individual cars. The choice of a conveyor for one stretch and skip cars for another shows a system that mixed methods to suit the terrain, and the surviving portal is the visible threshold where the belt entered the ground.
A Portal Worth Protecting
The belt-tunnel west portal joined the national register of Tangible Cultural Properties on 18 October 2006, as number 01-0076, in the same listing that protected the spoil bridge and the skip tunnel. It dates to 1951 and is recorded as an industrial civil-engineering work, listed for its contribution to the historic landscape. The fact that a single portal, rather than a complete bridge or building, was found worthy of protection says something about how this heritage is valued: each surviving piece is read as part of a working system, and even a threshold can stand for the whole.
This structure sits in the Shako district, slightly apart from its companions, about 500 metres west of the seven-arch spoil bridge. The Takamatsu spoil line ran roughly 800 metres in total and used both belt conveyor and skip cars to move waste out to the largest spoil heap in Yubari. The line stayed in service until the colliery closed in 1977, by which time the heap it had built up dominated the local landscape.
What to Look for
Focus on the contrast of scales. The portal face is wide and solid at 8.9 metres across, while the opening it frames is a modest semicircle around 2.5 metres in diameter. That difference tells you the portal was built to retain the slope and anchor the tunnel mouth, not merely to outline the bore. The concrete is unadorned and squared, the look of mid-century industrial work rather than anything decorative.
Because the portal stands a little away from the bridge and skip tunnel, reaching it completes the picture of the disposal line as a route through the terrain rather than a single point. Pair it with the other two surviving structures, and the three together let you read how the waste rock was moved: across the ground on arches, through the hill on a conveyor here and on skip cars there, and finally up onto the heap that still marks the Takamatsu skyline.
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Q&A
- Why is only the portal protected, not the whole tunnel?
- The west portal is the surviving registered element. It is valued as part of the spoil line as a working system, where each remaining piece, even a single tunnel mouth, represents the larger operation.
- What ran through the belt tunnel?
- A belt conveyor, a continuous moving band that carried waste rock through the hill, which is the source of the name. By contrast, the nearby skip tunnel carried iron cars.
- How big is the portal?
- The concrete portal is 8.9 metres wide and 3.3 metres high. The tunnel opening it frames has a semicircular section roughly 2.5 metres in diameter.
- Where is it in relation to the other spoil-line structures?
- It stands in the Shako district, about 500 metres west of the seven-arch spoil bridge, set slightly apart from the bridge and the skip tunnel.
- When was it built and registered?
- It was built in 1951 and registered as a national Tangible Cultural Property on 18 October 2006, as number 01-0076.
Basic Information
| Name | Former Hokutan Yubari Colliery Takamatsu Spoil-Line Belt Tunnel West Portal |
|---|---|
| Location | Shako, Yubari City, Hokkaido |
| Designation | Registered Tangible Cultural Property (Structure), registered 18 October 2006, No. 01-0076 |
| Date | 1951 (Showa 26) |
| Structure | Concrete portal at the west end of the tunnel; width 8.9 m, height 3.3 m; tunnel section a semicircular arch about 2.5 m in diameter |
| Quantity | 1 structure |
| Access | An outdoor structure in the Shako district; verify current access locally |
References
- National Database of Designated Cultural Properties, Agency for Cultural Affairs
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/bsys/maindetails/101/00005716
- Registered Tangible Cultural Properties of Yubari City, City of Yubari
- https://www.city.yubari.lg.jp/soshiki/14/1706.html
- Yubari City Coal Mine Museum
- https://coal-yubari.jp/
Last verified: 2026.06.25