Bibai City Local History Museum

What is indispensable for knowing the current Bibai is "history" and the only originality.
There are many things in the city that you can feel, see, and experience history, but if you visit the city after knowing it a little deeper, I am sure that the way you feel, the way you see, the situations that convince you, and the questions you have will change.

When you visit the Bibai City Local Historical Museum, you can learn about coal mining, life, and culture from the time before it was called Bibai, and it is a facility that allows you to feel the future from the present a little.
This page is not so much an introduction to the museum as it is an introduction to a part of the history left in the museum.

Bibai, which was called by the Ainu place name Pipa o i (where there are many river pearl oysters), has been called Bigai since the "Bikai Soot Field Survey Report" by geologist Benjamin Smith Lyman, and by the time the Tunda soldiers were deployed, it was pioneered to Numagai Village (a translation of Ainu place names) and then to the current Bibai.

When it was commonly used with Bigai, it was planned to open the Kabado Sorachima Shindo (Kabado Road and Dodo Tsukigatamine Extension Line), an important road connecting Sorachi and Kabado Shuji, and construction began the day after the completion of the Kamikawa Temporary Road (National Route 12). Both works were excavated by the prisoners of the Prison Guard, and although it was quite difficult, such as connecting the swamps in the marshland with a straight line and transporting soil and gravel by hand, it was completed in one year from the start of construction, and after that, the Tunden soldiers were deployed the year after the migration began and the Numagai Village was established, and the number of carpenters and laborers who started the construction of the Tunda Barracks increased, and the number of permanent residents increased, and commerce prospered.

After the disbandment of the Tuntian soldiers, the number of migrant farmers increased and agricultural development progressed, and the development of the Bibai coalfield was promoted by exploratory excavation mainly in the survey area of the American geologist Benjamin Smith Lyman.
With the opening of the Iida Bibai coal mine in Taisho 2 and the opening of the railway the following year, the town of Gaji, a coal mine urban area, was born, and at the time of the opening of the railway, all kinds of shops such as inns, restaurants, bathhouses, barbershops, etc. were lined up, and the number of houses comparable to the number of houses in the Bibai city area of the previous year was built in the upper reaches of the Bibai River. Subsequently, Mitsubishi Bibai Coal Mine acquired the company and became more than 10,000 employees.

In the Showa era, the Mitsui Bibai Coal Mine was born through the acquisition of the Japan Oil Koju Coal Mine, which was located in the current Minami-Bibai Town, by Mitsui (Mitsui Mining Co., Ltd.), one of Japan's two largest conglomerates.
In terms of the amount of coal produced by coal mine in Japan, Mitsubishi Bibai and Mitsui Bibai were among the top 10 coal mines, and Bibai was the only one in Japan to have two huge coal mines in the top 10 in terms of production per municipality.
The Mitsui Bibai Coal Mine was closed in Showa 38 and the Mitsubishi Bibai Coal Mine was closed in Showa 48, but at its peak, the area at the foot of the eastern mountain was in a state of no night castle, which is why it was called the coal city (coal city) Bibai.