Hokkaido University Museum Audio Guide

Hokkaido University General Museum: what does the audio guide cover?

1. 01

   Welcome to Hokkaido University General Museum

   Welcome to the Hokkaido University General Museum, known in Japanese as 北海道大学総合博物館. It stands on the campus of Hokkaido University in Sapporo, along the main street that runs north to south through the grounds. This is a university museum, so the stories here come from real research. Over its long history Hokkaido University has gathered around 4 million specimens and materials, and roughly 3 million of them are kept in this museum. Only a portion is on display, but each piece has a lot to say, and the museum invites you to notice how powerfully a single specimen can speak. Over this guide we will look at the building, the museum's roots in the Sapporo Agricultural College, the exhibits you can see inside, and a few practical pleasures you might not expect from a science museum. Let's start with the setting.

2. 02

   A 1929 Building at the Heart of Campus: Hokkaido University General Museum

   Look first at the building itself. The Hokkaido University General Museum occupies what was originally the main building of the Faculty of Science, completed in 1929. Its style is often described as modern Gothic, and its walls are covered in scratch tile, the ridged, textured brick-like cladding that gives so many classic Japanese university buildings their serious, timeless look. The building is celebrated as Sapporo's first reinforced concrete building, and it carries a real sense of history among the campus buildings. Step inside and the air feels cool and quiet. Look up into the open atrium known as the Einstein Dome, and you will see finely carved reliefs on the surrounding walls. They seem to whisper about the long tradition of scholarship that this place represents. It is a lovely thing to realize that the building was a working center of science long before it became a museum. The same halls that once belonged to a faculty of science now hold specimens from across the university's research, so the architecture and the collection share one purpose.

3. 03

   From Sapporo Agricultural College to Four Million Specimens: Hokkaido University General Museum

   The story of the collections begins with the university itself. Hokkaido University started in 1876 as the Sapporo Agricultural College. It later became the College of Agriculture of Tohoku Imperial University, then Hokkaido Imperial University, and from 1947 it has been Hokkaido University, the institution you see today. In 1884, during the college years, the university took over a botanical garden museum that had previously been run by the Kaitakushi, the colonization commission. That was the first museum of the university. It is still part of the university, but now falls under a separate research center rather than this museum. The museum you are visiting opened in 1999. It cares for roughly 4 million items gathered across the university's first century and a half, including 13,000 type specimens. Those are the reference specimens on which scientists base the official description of a species, which makes them especially precious to researchers. The museum has grown since then. In 2007 the Fisheries Science Museum, an exhibition facility of the fisheries faculty that opened in 1958, became an annex. In April 2015 the main museum closed for seismic retrofitting and interior work, and it reopened in 2016, the university's 140th anniversary, with nearly double the exhibition space.

4. 04

   Mammoths, Bones and Big Ideas Inside Hokkaido University General Museum

   Inside, the exhibits are arranged to tell you three things: where the university came from, what it is today, and how nature itself looks through the eyes of research. One zone traces the university's history from the Sapporo Agricultural College and introduces the spirit and the achievements of its predecessors. Another presents the university as it is now. A section called Challenging Hokkaido University shows favorite research projects. Another, the university's learning halls, covers the full range of 12 faculties across the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences. A third, Exploring Hokkaido University, introduces the research institutes and centers. Then there are the showstoppers. Visitors come face to face with a life-size model of a mammoth and with the skeleton of an adult male Holstein, and the sheer scale of both is something photographs don't prepare you for. Special exhibitions add to the mix. For the university's 150th anniversary, a summer special exhibition titled Dinosaurs of Hokkaido University runs from July 3 to November 1. If your visit falls in that window, it is a fine reason to linger.

5. 05

   Before You Head Off from Hokkaido University General Museum

   A museum like this rewards a slow visit, so give it time if you can. Before you leave the Hokkaido University General Museum, take a look at the museum shop and the food options. The shop sells gifts, including boxed sweets whose individually wrapped pieces carry the museum's name, which makes them handy for sharing with friends back home. As you step back outside, turn around and look at the facade once more. Notice the scratch tile, and think of the atrium and its carved reliefs inside. Then ask yourself which specimen spoke to you most, and why a collection that began in the nineteenth century still has so much to say. The campus around the museum is worth a stroll too, since the museum sits right on the main street through the grounds. There is plenty more to discover nearby, and your own curiosity is the best guide from here.