Suehirocho, Motomachi, Hakodate City

Hakodate Motomachi-Suehirocho: A Port Town Written in Slopes

Walk up from Hakodate's waterfront and the street tilts under you almost at once. The preservation district of Motomachi-Suehirocho follows a long C-shaped route of about 1.5 kilometers across the slopes below Mount Hakodate, from the brick warehouses at the harbor's edge up to the wide stone gradient of Motoizaka and the pale blue-and-yellow public hall at its head. The land rises and the architecture changes with it: merchant houses with Japanese ground floors and Western upper storeys, a Russian Orthodox cathedral, consulate buildings, a Catholic church spire. Covering roughly 14.5 hectares, the district was the cradle of the modern city, and locals still call this ground the birthplace of Hakodate.

The official heritage category is unusual for a small townscape: it is classed as a minato-machi, a port town. Hakodate opened to foreign trade in 1859 alongside Nagasaki and Yokohama, and the buildings here carry the marks of that opening more plainly than almost anywhere else in northern Japan.

How a Frontier Harbor Became a Treaty Port

Hakodate was valued as a natural harbor long before the foreign ships arrived. In 1779 the shogunate, wary of Russian expansion southward, placed Ezo (now Hokkaido) under direct rule and set up a magistrate's office on this very ground. After the Meiji Restoration the same area held the Hokkaido Colonization Commission's Hakodate branch, keeping it at the center of politics and commerce in the region.

The turning point came with the opening of the country. The 1854 Treaty of Peace and Amity between Japan and the United States designated Hakodate and Shimoda as ports where foreign ships could take on supplies and rest. Five years later, after commerce treaties with the United States, the Netherlands, Russia, Britain and France, Hakodate opened in 1859 as one of Japan's first ports for foreign trade. Consulates went up. Christian churches were built. The character of the town shifted toward something neither wholly Japanese nor wholly foreign.

Fire shaped the rest. The great blazes of 1878 and 1879 destroyed much of the city, and the rebuilding that followed redrew it from the ground up. Planners widened Motoizaka and Nijukken-zaka into firebreak avenues about 36 meters across and laid out straight cross streets in a regular grid. That grid is the template of today's district, and the street pattern has barely changed since.

Why the District Is Protected

Japan protects exceptional historic townscapes as Important Preservation Districts for Groups of Traditional Buildings, a system that conserves an area as a whole rather than picking out single monuments. Hakodate's city government designated Motomachi-Suehirocho in 1988, and the national government selected it in 1989 as the 29th such district in the country. It remains the only one in Hokkaido.

The selection rests on a single criterion: that the buildings and their surroundings clearly express the character of their region. Here that character is the meeting of cultures after the port opened. Wooden Japanese townhouses, full Western public and religious buildings, and the hybrid wayo-setchu houses combining both traditions stand together along the slopes. The original designation covered 89 traditional buildings; the protected count has since settled at around 75 to 77 as the register has been revised over the decades.

Two of the buildings carry their own higher rank as national Important Cultural Properties: the Old Public Hall of Hakodate Ward and the Resurrection Cathedral of the Hakodate Orthodox Church.

What to See

The slopes

The slopes are the district's signature, and each has its own feel. Hachimanzaka, named for a shrine that once stood at its top, is the one that ends up on postcards: a broad, straight descent that frames Hakodate Bay between rows of trees with nothing to block the view. A short walk east, Daisanzaka climbs past a cluster of churches. Motoizaka, the widest at about 36 meters, runs dead straight up to Motomachi Park; it earned the old nicknames of "government-office slope" because the region's offices sat at its head for centuries. In the evenings several of the slopes and their landmark buildings are lit, and in winter the illuminations draw their own crowds.

The Old Public Hall of Hakodate Ward

This is the building most visitors picture when they think of Motomachi. Completed in 1910 as a community assembly hall after fire destroyed its predecessor, it was paid for largely by the merchant Soma Teppei together with local donations. The wooden two-storey structure mixes colonial proportions with Renaissance-style detailing, and its exterior of pale blue with yellow trim is hard to miss from the slope below. It became a national Important Cultural Property in 1980 and is open to the public; visitors can even rent period dresses to be photographed inside.

Churches and the merchant houses

The skyline around Daisanzaka belongs to three churches standing close together: the Russian Orthodox Resurrection Cathedral, completed in 1916 and known locally for its bells; the Catholic Motomachi Church; and the Episcopal St. John's Church. Down toward the water, the picture changes to commerce. Brick warehouses run along the harbor in the Kanemori area, the only place in the district built in this scale of masonry, recalling Hakodate's role as a collecting point for marine goods. Among them stand former marine-product merchants' houses in the hybrid style, their two faces, one Japanese and one Western, telling the same story of the open port in miniature.

Getting There and Around

The district sits at the eastern edge of Hakodate's western quarter and is easiest reached by the city tram. From Hakodate Station the tram runs to Suehirocho and Jujigai for the warehouse area, or to Omachi for the upper slopes; from any of these stops the climb up to the public hall takes only a few minutes on foot. Because the landmarks cluster within a short walk of one another, most visitors simply wander between slopes rather than planning a fixed route. Good walking shoes help: the gradients are real, and they are the point.

The Old Public Hall of Hakodate Ward charges admission and keeps regular opening hours; a combined ticket covers the former British Consulate, the Museum of Northern Peoples and the Museum of Literature nearby. Hours and fees change from time to time, so it is worth checking current details before a visit.

Nearby

The former British Consulate of 1913 sits on Motoizaka and now serves as a port-opening memorial with a tearoom and garden. Motomachi Park, on the site of the old regional offices, makes a natural rest stop with views back down to the harbor. The Kanemori Red Brick Warehouses have been converted into shops and restaurants by the water, and the ropeway to the summit of Mount Hakodate, whose night view is famous well beyond Japan, runs from the edge of the district.