Hoheikan

A Government Hotel Built for an Emperor's Visit

Hoheikan (豊平館, also written Hōheikan) is a two-storey wooden Western-style building of 1880 standing in Nakajima Park, Chuo Ward, Sapporo, and it was designated an Important Cultural Property of Japan on 26 May 1964. It was built by the Kaitakushi, the government agency that directed the colonisation of Hokkaido, and operated as the agency's own hotel.

The colour is what registers first. White clapboard walls, and around every window and door frame a band of deep blue. The pigment is ultramarine, historically ground from lapis lazuli, and the Kaitakushi spent on it in a frontier town that had existed for barely a decade.

Construction began in early 1879 under the repairs section of the Kaitakushi's industrial bureau, with the contractor Ooka Sukeemon carrying out the work, and the building was completed in November 1880. The Agency for Cultural Affairs records that the British architect Josiah Conder was consulted during design, a detail that places Hoheikan at the point where imported and locally adapted Western building practice met in Japan.

It opened on 30 August 1881, the day Emperor Meiji arrived in Sapporo on his tour of Hokkaido, and served as his temporary residence.

Reading the Exterior

The building faces south. Its plan is a central block with wings whose ends project slightly forward and back, showing gables on the front and rear elevations. The foundation is faced in stone at the base, the walls are clapboard with corner boards set as pilasters, and a cornice runs around the building at the level of the second floor.

At the centre of the front a semicircular porte-cochere projects, carried on paired Corinthian columns, with a balustraded balcony above it. Rectangular balconies sit at the middle of each side elevation. Above the entrance the roof carries a segmental pediment, and at its apex is a star, the emblem of the Kaitakushi. The five-pointed star turns up all over Sapporo, from the Clock Tower to the label on the local beer, and Hoheikan wears one of its earliest architectural versions.

Symmetry mattered enough to the builders that features were added simply to balance the composition. The windows are double-hung sashes throughout. The roof was originally shingled and then covered with sheet metal, and the national record lists the roofing as zinc-coated plate.

The building covers 528.8 square metres. That is not large by the standards of Meiji public architecture, and the impression at close range is of a well-proportioned house rather than a monument.

Inside, and What Survived the Move

Both floors are organised around a central hall. On the west side are the large reception room and dining room; on the east, guest rooms open off a corridor running down the middle. Walls and ceilings are plastered, and the roof is framed as a Western truss rather than a Japanese one.

The plaster ceiling roses are the thing to look up for. The motifs are Japanese, maple leaves and peonies among them, modelled in relief on ceilings that are otherwise entirely Western in conception. A Japanese plasterer working in a foreign idiom chose what he knew, and the result belongs to neither tradition cleanly.

The staircase rising from the entrance hall turns as it climbs, and its curve and detailing show a level of finish the rest of the plan does not prepare you for. It is original.

Hoheikan did not begin life in Nakajima Park. It was built at Kita 1 Nishi 1, near where the Sapporo TV Tower now stands. After the imperial visit it served as a reception facility for the Imperial Household Ministry and later as the city's public hall, was designated a site associated with Emperor Meiji, and lost that status in 1948. It then became Sapporo's civic hall until a new municipal hall was built, at which point the building was dismantled and re-erected in Nakajima Park. The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates the relocation to 1957; the building's official site gives 1958. The work spanned the turn of those years, and the two dates reflect different points in the same process.

The move brought changes. Some partitions were altered, fireplaces were removed or rebuilt, lavatories were added, and the full basement was reduced to a reinforced concrete core under the centre. Fittings, ceiling roses, light fixtures and the staircase came through largely as they were. Until fiscal 2011 the building operated as a municipal wedding venue, which is how a great many Sapporo residents of a certain age first came through its doors.

Planning a Visit

Hoheikan is open from 9:00 to 17:00, with last admission at 16:30. On designated evenings, including the fourth Friday of each month, hours extend to 20:00 with last admission at 19:30. It closes on the second Tuesday of each month, moving to the following weekday when that Tuesday is a public holiday, and from 29 December to 3 January.

Admission is 350 yen for adults, 300 yen for groups of twenty or more, and 150 yen for high school and university students. Junior high school students and younger enter free, and an annual pass costs 700 yen. Cashless payment is accepted, including credit cards, transit IC cards and QR code payment, and advance tickets are sold online.

Personal photography inside is ordinarily fine, but media coverage, commercial shoots and requests for image use go through an application procedure set out on the official site. If you are shooting anything beyond snapshots, arrange it in advance.

The address is 1-20 Nakajima Koen, Chuo Ward. From Nakajima Koen Station on the Namboku subway line, exit 3, the walk is about five minutes; from Horohirabashi Station, exit 1, about ten; from the Nakajima Koen Dori streetcar stop, about five. There is no general car park, only two accessible spaces, so public transport is the practical choice.

Rooms in the building can be hired between 17:00 and 22:00, and some are available during opening hours, so a room may occasionally be in use when you visit. There is a cafe on site. Nakajima Park itself repays the walk in any season, and the pond and the surrounding trees frame the building from several angles that are worth finding before going inside.