Second Farm, Faculty of Agriculture, Hokkaido University (Former College of Agriculture, Tohoku Imperial University)

Nine Farm Buildings on a University Campus

The Second Farm of the Faculty of Agriculture, Hokkaido University (北海道大学農学部（旧東北帝国大学農科大学）第二農場), formerly the College of Agriculture of Tohoku Imperial University, is a group of nine Meiji-era farm buildings on the Sapporo campus of Hokkaido University, collectively designated an Important Cultural Property of Japan on 19 August 1969. The university itself calls the site Sapporo Agricultural College Second Farm (札幌農学校第2農場), and it is also widely known by the English name Model Barn.

The buildings sit together on open ground north of the main campus buildings, arranged as a working farmstead rather than as a display. Gravel underfoot, a low fence, barns facing each other across a yard. Nothing about the layout announces that this is protected architecture.

That is the point of it. The Second Farm was built as a demonstration operation, a single livestock farm reproduced at full scale so that settlers could see how large-scale mixed farming worked before attempting it themselves.

Clark, Wheeler, Brooks

Sapporo Agricultural College opened in 1876 with William Smith Clark as vice-principal. Clark's plan for Hokkaido rested on large-scale farming with livestock at its centre, a model drawn from Massachusetts Agricultural College, where he had been president. He was in Sapporo for only eight months, but the agricultural programme he set up outlasted him by a long way.

His successors carried the plan forward. William Wheeler designed the Model Barn of 1877, and William P. Brooks designed the Corn Barn of the same year. Brooks went on to spend years selecting crops and implements suited to the Hokkaido climate and teaching methods of cultivation and management, work that shaped how farming in the region was actually done.

The buildings use balloon frame construction, the light timber framing that spread across the American Midwest during its settlement. Studs run continuously from sill to roof plate, nailed rather than jointed, which made it possible to raise a large structure quickly with sawn lumber and unskilled labour. Inside the Model Barn the effect is immediate: the upper floor, used for hay storage, is a clear span with no posts interrupting it.

The farm did not stay in one place. Between 1909 and 1912 the operation was rebuilt on its present ground, and three of the 1877 buildings were dismantled and re-erected there. The Agency for Cultural Affairs notes that although these were altered in the process, they still carry the character of the original designs prepared by the American teachers under Clark's plan, and that this connection to the founding of Sapporo Agricultural College is what makes them valuable.

The Nine Buildings

The designation covers nine structures, together with two design drawings listed as attached items. Their dates split into two groups: three survivors from 1877, and six built between 1909 and 1911 when the farm moved.

• Birthing Room, Holding Pen and Workhorse Barn (産室・追込所及び耕馬舎), 1877, timber, 476.9 square metres, two storeys, central ventilation tower, sheet metal roof. This is the Model Barn.
• Bull Barn (種牛舎), 1877, timber, 223.1 square metres, single storey, sheet metal roof.
• Grain Store (穀物庫), 1877, timber, 110.2 square metres, two storeys, gable entry, sheet metal roof, with an elevated corridor attached on the west. This is the Corn Barn.
• Cattle Barn (牧牛舎), 1909, timber, 449.6 square metres, single storey, eight ventilation towers, slate roof, with wings on the east and west.
• Office (事務所), 1910, timber, 115.7 square metres, single storey, front porch, sheet metal roof.
• Weighing Station (秤量場), 1910, timber, 28.9 square metres, single storey, gable entry, sheet metal roof.
• Boiler House (釜場), 1910, stone, 66.1 square metres, single storey, sheet metal roof.
• Harvest and Hulling Rooms (収穫室及び脱稃室), 1911, timber, 133.9 square metres, partly two storeys, sheet metal roof.
• Dairy (製乳所), 1911, brick, 76.9 square metres, single storey, north entrance, boiler room on the west, sheet metal roof.

Three materials appear across the group: timber, stone and brick. The choice tracks function rather than fashion. The Boiler House is stone because it handled fire, the Dairy is brick because milk processing needed washable, stable interior conditions, and everything housing animals or fodder is timber.

The Grain Store is worth close attention from outside. It stands on stone piers about a metre high, some four dozen of them, with rat guards fitted at the tops, and the walls are boarded with gaps for ventilation. Every element is aimed at keeping grain dry and free of vermin through a Hokkaido winter.

A silo built in 1912 stands nearby and is described as the oldest in Hokkaido. It falls outside the nine designated buildings, but it belongs to the same operation and is visible from the yard.

Visiting the Second Farm

Admission is free. The grounds and building exteriors are open all year from 8:30 to 17:00. Interiors of three buildings, the Model Barn, the Grain Store and the Cattle Barn, open from 29 April to 3 November, from 10:00 to 16:00. Interior viewing is suspended in winter, when only the exteriors and the front yard can be seen. The site closes on the fourth Monday of each month, and from 28 December to 4 January.

Photography is not restricted for personal purposes. Inside the barns the light is low and the timber is dark, so a camera that handles high sensitivity well is more useful than a flash, which is disruptive to other visitors in the confined upper floors.

The farm lies within the Hokkaido University Sapporo campus, almost directly above the Elm Tunnel, at Kita 18 Nishi 7 in Kita Ward. From Kita Juhachi-jo Station on the Namboku subway line the walk is roughly ten minutes. Coming from JR Sapporo Station on foot means twenty-five minutes or more through the campus, which is a pleasant walk in summer and a cold one otherwise.

Displays inside the barns include agricultural implements imported from the United States in the early Meiji period, horse-drawn machinery among them. These are set out in the spaces they were used in rather than in cases, which makes the scale of the equipment easier to judge.

The site was selected as a Hokkaido Heritage in 2001. Combining it with the university museum, about fifteen minutes' walk south on the same campus, makes a reasonable half day.