銭函 ぜにばこ Zenibako
Zenibako, Otaru, Shiribeshi region, Hokkaidō
Zenibako is a Japanese name among Hokkaidō place names that are mostly Ainu, and its elements are transparent. Every reading proposed for it, the Ainu one included, is a proposal about why a money box was the figure chosen, or a denial that a money box is what the name says.
Location
43.1435, 141.1597 · Coordinates: OpenStreetMap Nominatim, 2026-09-10, on 銭函. Open in OpenStreetMap
Referents
- settlement The Zenibako district in the east of Otaru, on the coast where the Ishikari plain opens out. Written 銭箱 in early Meiji, then 銭凾 as a village name, and 銭函 from the early Heisei years; the Bakumatsu nishiki-e also write 千匣 and 前匣. Both Zenibako and Senhako are recorded readings.
Analyses
銭箱
ゼニバコ ‘the box for the money made from the herring catch’ received readingProponent: 『角川日本地名大辞典』ほか
The received account: herring were taken here in quantity, the fishermen prospered, and the boxes holding the money piled up until the place came to be called Zenibako. The Kadokawa dictionary of Japanese place names has 'Japanese named it Zenibako because the herring fishery brought enormous profit'; Hokkaidō ekimei no kigen has 'this place has long been known as a herring ground, the catches were large and life was rich, and they named it the money box of the fishing houses'; Chimei o meguru Hokkaidō and the JR station-origin dictionary say the same. Few of them mention a physical box; the sense is closer to a fishing ground that pays.
Objections
- The Ebisuya set fishing grounds at Kuttarushi, Okobachi and Arihoro in 1717 and at Nobuka, Atsutomari, Kumausu, Asari and Harusui by the Kansei era, and reached Zenibako last, in 1838, about 120 years later. The Tenmei and Bunka records list nihachi huts from central Otaru to Reibunzuka at Harusui and pass over Zenibako. The Otarunai unjōya itself moved from here to Kuttarushi because the herring were better there. When the Hakodate magistrate's party lodged at Zenibako in 1857, Tamamushi Sadayū found 'a thatched hut, cramped to the point that one could barely get one's knees inside'; four attendants and one steward stayed with the magistrate and the rest lodged in ordinary fishing huts. — zenibako_trek zenibako_trek…
The name is Japanese and its elements are plain; what is contested is the reason. The herring account is the one the reference works carry and the one Matsuura offers, and the records of when fishing grounds were opened and how the buildings looked run against it.
seni-poko
セニポコ ‘the place of acorns and surf clams’ proposed- seni ‘tree whose bark is hard and peels like a shell’
- poko ‘surf clam’
Proponent: 『銭函郷土史 第一巻』
The local history: 'seni (sheni) means a tree whose bark is hard and peels like a shell, and poko is poku or pako, the surf clam. It means the place of the oak forest running some twenty kilometres from Ishikari, that is, of acorns for food, and of plentiful surf clams; senipoko will have been worn down to senihako over a long time.' The local history calls the forest kashi; the windbreak forest from Zenibako 3-chōme to 5-chōme is kashiwa oak.
Objections
- The acorn of the kashiwa is nisew, whose sound is far from sheni; sey 'shell' is the other possible source. The surf clam is poksey, from which the Japanese hokkigai comes. Put together, nisew-poksey 'acorn, surf clam' is two nouns of little connection set side by side, a shape hardly found among Ainu place names, and the road from it to Zenibako is not shown. nisew-pok-i 'the place below the acorn trees', with pok 'below' as the second element, would at least be grammatical. The same volume's readings of Harusui and Wauji depart from the received ones as well. — zenibako_trek zenibako_trek…
Neither seni nor poko is an Ainu word the dictionaries carry in the senses given. The words the proponent seems to be reaching for, nisew 'acorn' and poksey 'surf clam', are both dictionary words, and neither matches the proponent's form in sound; two coordinated nouns is not a shape Ainu place names take.
セニハコ
セニハコ ‘the settlement on the narrow shore below the cliff’ proposedProponent: 「「箱根」「銭函」の地名由来－目からウロコの地名由来」
The proponent: 'Zenibako in Otaru, Hokkaidō, does not come from a box for the money made in the herring fishery. There the gentle sandy shore that has run from the mouth of the Ishikari River ends, and past the Yachi River the coast becomes a narrow passage below a marine terrace cliff. Zeni is seni, meaning a narrow place, and hako is a cliff, so Zenibako is the settlement on the narrow shore below the cliff.' A reading built from Japanese elements.
Objections
- The ground for seni meaning a narrow place is not given. Among Japanese place names with seni the author found 瀬西, 迫西 and 背荷 but few that mean a narrow place. The name is often written and read Senhako in early records; 銭 is read both sen and zeni, while 狭 is not read sen. Coming from the cliff into the narrows is the view from Sapporo, and there was no Japanese settlement at Sapporo then; travellers came from Irifune in Otaru, past Oshoro, Otamoi, Takashima, Asari and Harusui, where cliffs press on the shore the whole way and people lived in the narrow ground below them. At Zenibako the land opens suddenly and the Ishikari plain spreads out, which the travel diaries of the period record. Naming that spot 'the narrow place' is hard to credit. — zenibako_trek zenibako_trek…
The reading is of Japanese elements and turns on seni meaning narrow, for which the proponent gives no evidence. The direction of approach that the reading assumes is the modern one.
銭箱
ゼニバコ ‘the untaxed fishing ground where a fisherman kept what he caught’ proposedProponent: zenibako_trek（小樽銭函地名歴史研究会） (zenibako_trek (Otaru Zenibako Place-Name and History Society))
Built on Tamamushi Sadayū's statement that the place lay outside the unjōkin. The unjōkin was a levy paid to the unjōya, two parts in ten of the catch, which is why herring huts were called nihachi-goya. The Otarunai unjōya had stood at Zenibako and moved to Irifune, after which no fishing ground was set here for about 120 years. Fishing here was untaxed in that interval, so a fisherman kept what he took. The Ebisuya opened a ground in 1838, and by the time Matsuura and Tamamushi came through, nihachi huts stood in rows and the levy was collected; the name outlived the arrangement that gave it its sense.
Evidence
- documents
Tamamushi Sadayū: 'Zenihako is not a village name either. From of old this place lay outside the unjōkin, and being called the money box of Otarunai it came to serve as a village name.'
- documents
The Inō map, completed in 1821, draws more buildings at Zenibako than at Harusui, seventeen years before an official ground was opened here in 1838, and calls the place ya-us-nupka 'the hill where the nets are'. Fishing huts stood here before the unjōya recognised the ground.
- documents
The Otarunai unjōya moved from here to Kuttarushi, today's Irifune, because the salmon catch here was modest and herring were plentiful there; the name Otarunai moved with it. Zenibako received a fishing ground last of all the Otaru grounds, in 1838, about 120 years after the first.
- documents
The village that the buildings describe is a poor one. Tamamushi found the banya a cramped thatched hut in 1857. After the colonial office moved its temporary bureau out, Edward Morse passed through and wrote of 'a few sleepy houses making up the poor village of Genibaku', an inn near ruin with long rows of empty rooms and bad rice. Zenibako has no historic building standing today, while Otaru has some eighty designated ones.
The reading keeps the plain Japanese elements of the received account and changes the reason behind them, and it rests on a contemporary statement by a witness on the spot, who gives the levy-free status and the name in one sentence. The Inō map and the sequence of unjōya moves support it. The step it adds is the fishermen's motive: Tamamushi records that the place was called the money box of Otarunai, and says nothing about who called it that or when.
Ota-shup kotan
‘Sand-spit place’ proposed- Ota ‘sand’
- shup ‘spit’
- kotan ‘place’
Proponent: John Batchelor
The Ainu name of this place is Ota-shupkotan which means Sand-spit place. Zeni-bako is a Japanese name meaning money-box.
Batchelor's reading and gloss as printed in 1905; the segmentation is his, and several of its elements answer to no dictionary headword.
Attestations
- 銭箱 document Edo period 西蝦夷日誌
銭箱、これ和人名なり。この処、鯡多くしていつも漁事ありてよろしき故、かのごとく名付けしものか。
Matsuura Takeshirō states that the name is a Japanese one and connects it to the herring catch.
zenibako_trek… - ゼニハコ document 1857 入北記
ゼニハコと申すも村名にあらず。古よりこの所は運上金外の場所にて、ヲタルナイの銭箱と云うことにて村名同様になるたる由
Tamamushi Sadayū records that the name is not a village name and that the place lay outside the unjōkin levy, so that it was called the money box of Otarunai.
zenibako_trek… - ヤウシノツカ map 1821 伊能図
The Inō map, finished in 1821, names the place ya-us-nupka 'the hill where the nets are'. It shows more buildings here than at neighbouring Harusui, seventeen years before the Ebisuya opened an official fishing ground at Zenibako in 1838.
zenibako_trek…
Related names
- ヲタルナイ おたるない — ota-ru-nay 'the river of the sandy road', the name of a river near the mouth of the present Shin River in Teine; the ground it named is today's Zenibako 3-chōme. Salmon were the main catch there. When the unjōya moved to Kuttarushi the name went with it. Otane Marsh is a trace of the old river. zenibako_trek…
- 張碓 はりうす — The neighbouring fishing ground, opened long before Zenibako and drawn with fewer buildings on the Inō map. The Tenmei and Bunka records place the last of the nihachi huts at Reibunzuka in Harusui. zenibako_trek…