Guardian Angels Cathedral, Sapporo Audio Guide

Kita Ichijo Catholic Church: what does the audio guide cover?

1. 01

   Welcome to Catholic Kita ichi jo church

   Welcome to Catholic Kita ichi jo church, known in Japanese as カトリック北一条教会, in Chuo Ward, in the heart of Sapporo. This guide focuses on the church's history and its historic buildings. It leaves out anything about the interior that we cannot tell with confidence. This is not just a parish church. It is the cathedral of the Catholic Diocese of Sapporo, the seat of the bishop, and its cathedral title is Guardian Angels. In a city famous for its wide grid of streets and its young, nineteenth-century roots, this church is one of the places where you can feel that pioneer era in solid stone and timber. Over the next few minutes we will trace how a small temporary chapel grew into a cathedral, look at the buildings that make this site so distinctive, and meet a couple of puzzles that historians still tell in two different ways. One practical note before we begin: a Protestant church with a very similar name stands elsewhere in Sapporo. We are talking only about the Catholic one.

2. 02

   Catholic Kita ichi jo church: From Hakodate to Sapporo

   The Catholic story in Sapporo begins in 1880, when the parish priest Father Petit travelled up from the Hakodate church on a two-week mission tour. That journey was the first Catholic missionary work in Sapporo. The following year, Christmas Mass was celebrated in a believer's home on South 1 West 3, led by Father Urbain Faurie from Hakodate. Imagine that: a small group gathering in a private house in a frontier town that was still taking shape. The site you are standing near has its own starting point. A temporary chapel was built in 1891 on the Kita 2 jo side. Then, in 1898, the French priest Father Henri Lafon built a combined church and rectory. Because Hokkaido winters are fierce, it was built of stone. For its early years, this community was just one church within the Hakodate diocese. Sapporo's rapid rise and its growing number of believers changed that.

3. 03

   Catholic Kita ichi jo church: Becoming a Cathedral

   Here is how a parish became a cathedral. In 1915, Sapporo was made an apostolic prefecture, and Father Kinold took his seat here as prefect. In 1929 it became an apostolic vicariate, and Kinold, by then a titular bishop, served as its vicar. Each step raised the standing of this church within the Catholic world. The war years left a mark too. In 1943, the mission hall on the west side was taken over by the army, and it was returned only when the war ended. Then in 1953, the Catholic Diocese of Sapporo was established, and Catholic Kita ichi jo church became its cathedral. That is the role it holds today: the bishop's church for the diocese, with the cathedral title Guardian Angels.

4. 04

   Catholic Kita ichi jo church: Stone, Timber and a Puzzle of Dates

   Now look at the buildings themselves. The rectory, now called the Cathedral Hall, dates from 1898 and is built of Sapporo soft stone, the pale local volcanic stone that gave many of the city's early buildings their character. Beside it stands the church building, with a Romanesque-style central tower flanked by small Gothic-style spires, and continuous decorative bands running across the walls and windows. Together they give the church a medieval air, in the middle of a northern Japanese city. A kindergarten building next door shares the same atmosphere. The date of the present church building is a genuine puzzle, and two accounts survive. One says the wooden, three-aisle church was dedicated in October 1916 under the title Guardian Angels. The other says it was built in 1926 and designed by a German priest, Father F. Felget, in the traditional Catholic form. Both agree that it is a timber church standing next to the older stone rectory. The recognition is clear, though. Both the church and the Cathedral Hall are listed among Sapporo's landscape assets, with the church numbered 22, and both are among the Sapporo Furusato Culture One Hundred Selections. The church was also designated an important landscape building under the city's landscape ordinance in 2008.

5. 05

   Before You Head Off

   As you take a last look, see how many layers you can pick out. There is the pale stone of the 1898 rectory, the tower with its small spires, and the long story that runs from a two-week mission tour in 1880 to the seat of a bishop. Try comparing the stone building with the timber one beside it, and notice how each answers the same northern climate in its own way. The church stands in the Kita 1 jo Higashi 6 chome area of Chuo Ward, so it also makes a rewarding stop on a wider walk through the city's older streets. And keep that date puzzle in mind. Whether you side with 1916 or 1926 for the present church, the real pleasure is in looking closely at the building and asking what it has seen.