Susan's Shanghai Blog - Week 82

The Sapporo/Hokkaido Historical Village is located in the suburbs of Sapporo. It is an outdoor museum that was opened in 1983 and is meant to preserve old structures from around Hokkaido and to show what early life was like on the island.

There are about 60 structures that are considered "typical structures" from the Meiji and Taisho eras (mid 19th century to early 20th century). They have all been moved to this site and restored. It is divided into four sections: Town, Fishing village, Farm village, and Mountain village.

I'll split this into two different weeks, since there are SO many pictures.

The Old Sapporo Railway Station, which serves as the main entrance. It dates from 1908 and served as the front gate to Sapporo from 1908 to 1952.

This is the Visitor center, but is a replica of the Kaitakushi Sapporo Headquarters of the Colonization, which burned down in 1879. The original structure dated from 1873 and was made of wood (hence the burn down part) but this one is actually made of concrete.

This is Kondo's Dying shop, which was founded in 1898 (although the building itself is from 1913). It was Asahikawa's oldest dyeing shop and the two-story wooden building has a very traditional architectural style. Inside, it shows how the dyeing shop would have been including the tatami mats on the floor.

Kurumasa Inn was an built in 1919 in Asahikawa and was in use for travelers until 1984. We went inside the two-story structure and, well, I don't know that it would be somewhere that I would have wanted to stay as I'm not a fan of sleeping on tatami mats.

This 1919 building was the Hokkaido Subprefectural Government Building. This to me looks like a very typical American building ... not exactly what I would have envisioned for a Japanese building from 1919.

This little house was the residence of the railway stationmaster from Temiya, which is where Hokkaido's railways had their start. The building, from 1884, has a western-style roof truss. Inside was furnished as it would have been, including the kimono hanging up in one of the rooms.

This is a western-style residence, dating from 1898, that had apartments where Kaitakushi officals lived. Its' name, Shirokansha, means officials white residence referring to the wall color. It was mentioned in a story by Japanese author Takeo Arishima and become somewhat famous.

This little house was the home of Naritoyo Fukushi, a surveyor who established the first base-line measurement in Hokkaido. The front part of the house is very much in a western-style.

This tin-roof house, dating from 1897, was built by the Matsuhashi family, who owned a real estate company. Inside, the front room has a very western style, setup as an office, but the rest of the rooms are quite Japanese.

This was the residence of Takeo Arishima, a renowned Japanese author. He lived here during while married, and the house appears in his story (The Agony of Coming into Existence). When not living in the house, he leased it to tenant farmers.

This large building was the Hokkai Middle School, the first private junior high school in Hokkaido. The one-story wooden structure dates from 1909.

The Ryuunji Temple (1893) was a farming village temple from the colonial period. While most of the settlers were quite poor, they contributed large amounts of money to build a fine temple because the temple was their spiritual support.

We then temporarily left the "Town" section and headed into the Fishing Village. This is one of a couple buildings from the Aoyama family's fishery. They were a large family who fished for herring along the shores of Otaru and their structure includes 7 different facilities, including storehouses for net and rice. The right-part of this building was the family residence while to the left was the residences for the fishermen who came to Hokkaido to work. The 2nd picture shows this fishermen residence, and you can see it is just a large open room where the fishermen slept on mats next to each other around the outside. The middle area was used to cook and eat.

These pictures are from the family's residence, and you can see they lived much better than the fishermen did.

Here you can see the boats stored in buildings that were used to fish for herring.

This is a storehouse that was built on the coastline of the Sea of Japan. You can see the back-side is up on posts, and this half of the storehouse would have projected out into the sea so that boats could go under the storehouse and the cargo could be loaded and unloaded directly from the boat through a hole in the floor of the storehouse. This is one of the oldest buildings, dating back to 1887.

Three generations of the Akiyama family lived in this 1919 one-story house. They were fishermen, fishing for herring in the Sea of Japan. Inside, there were a couple people who were showing how the nets that were used for this type of fishing were created and fixed.

Back in the Town section, the Urakawa Church was built by Puritan settlers in Kobe in 1894. It was used as a meeting hall and a place for education in addition to its original function as a church.

This is one of the horse-drawn trolleys that run in the summer along the main street.

And it seemed it be a popular place for little Japanese kids, we're guessing on a field trip. We think it is a little funny that they all have their little backpacks and have different colored hats.