Sapporo Clock Tower Audio Guide

Sapporo Clock Tower: what does the audio guide cover?

1. 01

   Welcome to Sapporo Clock Tower

   Welcome to the Sapporo Clock Tower, known in Japanese as 札幌市時計台. You are standing in the heart of Sapporo, in the Chuo ward, at the corner of Kita 1-jo and Nishi 2-chome. A small white wooden building with a red roof sits among the modern city blocks, with a clock tower rising from its front. It looks like a landmark, but it began as a school building. Its formal name is the Former Sapporo Agricultural School Drill Hall. The school is the ancestor of today's Hokkaido University, and the hall went up in 1878, when Sapporo was a young frontier town of only about 3,000 people. Over the next few minutes we will look at how a gymnasium and ceremony hall became the city's best-loved symbol. We will also look at the American clock that rules it, the wooden construction style behind its look, and the watchmaker who once fixed it for free. It is a good story to hear while you look at the tower.

2. 02

   Sapporo Clock Tower: A Hall for Drills and Diplomas

   The Sapporo Agricultural School opened in 1876, and two years later this building went up as its central hall. The idea behind it is traditionally credited to Doctor Clark, the school's first vice principal. The ground floor held research rooms and lecture rooms. Upstairs was the drill hall itself, where students did military training and physical education. That upper room also hosted the big occasions: entrance ceremonies, graduation ceremonies and celebrations. Two of the school's most famous graduates, Nitobe Inazo and Uchimura Kanzo, both from the second class, received their degrees here. Imagine young scholars in a frontier town, standing in this very hall, being handed bachelor's degrees. The hall was never only for students. In the school years it also hosted lectures on the issues of the day, so townspeople used it as a public meeting hall too. A building that seems small to us today was, in its own time, one of the main gathering places in Sapporo.

3. 03

   Sapporo Clock Tower: The Clock That Was Too Big

   Here is the part that surprises most people: when the hall was finished, it had no clock tower at all. On the roof there was only a small bell tower, used to announce the start and end of classes. Tradition holds that Kuroda Kiyotaka, the head of the Hokkaido Development Commission, attended the completion ceremony and ordered a proper tower clock. On the twenty-fifth of October, 1878, vice principal Wheeler ordered the clock from the Howard clock company in New York. The machinery reached Sapporo around June of 1879, and it turned out to be bigger than anyone expected. It would not fit in the little bell tower. A larger clock tower was needed, and the clock was installed in 1881. That American pendulum clock is still the heart of the building. In 1888 it was designated the standard clock of Sapporo, and its bell carried across the town. Locals knew it as the great clock of the Agricultural School. Today it is recognized as the oldest working tower clock in Japan.

4. 04

   Sapporo Clock Tower: From School Hall to City Symbol

   In 1903 the Agricultural School moved to its current site, where Hokkaido University stands today, to make room for new buildings. The hall and its tower stayed behind, reportedly because local residents strongly wanted to keep them. The city of Sapporo took over the building, and around this time people began calling it the Clock Tower. In 1906 the city bought it outright. From 1911 until 1966, apart from the Pacific War years and a short period after, it worked as a library and public hall. It was a place for reading, study, and lectures on literature, politics, economics and science. In 1963 the Sapporo citizens' charter even opened with the words: we are citizens of Sapporo, where the clock tower bell rings. It was not always so well treasured, though. In 1933 the clock had stood stopped for a long time. A local watchmaker named Inoue Kiyoshi offered to repair it, but the city declined, citing budget. So he did it as a volunteer, and he spent a month removing rust and carefully taking the parts apart to repair them. That one man's patience helped keep the clock alive.

5. 05

   Before You Head Off from Sapporo Clock Tower

   Before you move on, remember how rare this is. After Japan switched to the solar calendar in 1872, 72 Western-style clock towers were built across the country. This is the only one still keeping time in its original form. In 2009 it was named the thirty-second Mechanical Engineering Heritage site, and in 1970 the building itself was designated an Important Cultural Property. If you step inside, the ground floor has exhibits on the history of the Agricultural School and the clock, with large models and photo panels. Upstairs, the old drill hall keeps its high wooden ceiling and its simple benches. The bell strikes once for each hour, so noon is the loudest time to be nearby. Sapporo residents get in free on the sixteenth of every month. As you leave, look back and compare the little wooden hall with the glass and concrete around it. Then ask yourself what the town must have looked like when this bell was the loudest sound in it.