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Kushiro Shitsugen NP, Hokkaido
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Ainu residents of the Toro kotan once held a September Pekanpe Kamuy-nomi, thanking the kamuy for spiny water-caltrop nuts and praying for a safe harvest. They collected the nuts by canoe, turning over floating leaves to find them beneath.
The ridge north of Sarubo holds a well-preserved Ainu chashi, or enclosed earthwork. Local museum research identifies it as Hanke Keuni Chashi, thought to have been built by the Kushiro Ainu leader Tomichayaino.
Lake Toro is fresh today, but a marine crustacean called kuroi-sazaami still lives there—a tiny relic of its coastal past. The surrounding wetland took shape as the sea retreated about 4,000 years ago.
In winter, expanding ice on Lake Toro can buckle into a raised seam called omiwatari, or “God’s Crossing.” An Environment Ministry ranger described deep booms from the ice that sound like a giant’s footsteps.
Pekanpe, or water-caltrop nuts, were a valued Ainu winter food: dried for storage, boiled or cooked with rice, and even given to infants as a milk substitute, according to Shibecha’s local history.
The 1958 film Mori to Mizuumi no Matsuri spent 2 months filming around Lake Toro. Scenes at Notappu Cape feature the Pekanpe festival, bringing the lake’s Ainu traditions onto the big screen.
The nearby Eoruto Pond’s name may preserve a textile-making tradition: Shibecha Museum research interprets it as a pond where elm inner bark was soaked to prepare fibers for Ainu clothing. Bark-cloth garments were also traded.
Near the trail entrance, water still flows from a cliff cleft called Kamuy-sinpuy—Ainu for “the god’s spring-hole,” according to local museum research. The old name still fits a spring visitors can see today.
From the neighboring Sarurun lookout, Ponto and Eoruto seem separate—but Shibecha Museum research says they were one pond until water levels fell in the mid-Meiji period. The new pond was named Ponto, “small pond.”
Local museum research traces Sarubo to the Ainu words sar-po: “small marsh.” The name referred to wetland between Lake Toro and the Kushiro River, rather than to the lake or the viewpoint itself.
The pond called Sarurun-to was provisionally named in 1981, according to a Shibecha Museum study; its older name is unknown. The Ainu word for red-crowned crane apparently inspired the choice.
