Kirakotan Cape was added to Your Favorites!
Kushiro Shitsugen NP, Hokkaido
Claim this place to tell your story your way.
Thought extinct around 1890, red-crowned cranes were confirmed alive in 1924 in marshes by Kirakotan after local residents alerted a Hokkaido official. By 1925, a national no-hunting reserve protected the area.
From Kirakotan’s tip, the Chiluwatsunai River looks less like one stream than a living maze: it makes tight bends, repeatedly splits into branches, and threads among ponds across the wetland.
Kirakotan’s inland “cape” marks a vanished coastline: the Kushiro basin was once a bay, and its surrounding hills are thought to be old sea cliffs. Peat began accumulating in the lagoon about 3,000 years ago.
The cape’s surroundings have a botanical plot twist: amid Kushiro’s broad reed-and-sedge fens, the ministry records sphagnum-bog patches near Kirakotan with cotton grass and Labrador tea—a different wetland community.
