Historic Industrial Sapporo

The Original Sapporo Factory and Other Traces of Industrial History

Hokkaidō wasn't fully controlled by Japan until the middle of the 19th century CE. Neither the Emperor nor the Shōgun had done more than establish colonies on the island.

Russia established more settlements in the region between 1600 and 1850, taking control of the northern half of Sakhalin, the Okhotsk coast of Siberia, and Kamchatka and the Kuril Islands. So, in the 1850s the Tokugawa Shōgunate took control of most of the large island that was still called Ezochi.

The Meiji Restoration of 1868 deposed the Shōgun and returned the Emperor to full power. His troops seized control of the island, which was renamed Hokkaidō.

What today is Sapporo was then the site of some Ainu settlements. Construction of the town and its industry began immediately.

Portion of Tactical Pilotage Chart TPC F-10C from the Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection at the University of Texas at Austin. Sapporo is in a broad alluvial plain, unlike the mountainous terrain of most of Hokkaidō.

The Oldest Pavement

Road pavement was introduced to Sapporo late during Emperor Taishō's rule of 1912–1926. A 117-meter section of Kita Sanjo Avenue became Sapporo's first paved road in 1924. The road itself was covered with wooden blocks, while the sidewalks down either side were coated with asphalt.

The wooden blocks were made from southern Hokkaidō beech. Each block was 15×9×8.5 cm, treated with a preservative made by mixing creosote oil with coal tar.

After six years the wood blocks were bulging, probably due to freeze-thaw cycles in the harsh winters. In 1930 the city engineers covered the wood blocks with asphalt.

The wood blocks stayed in place until some were uncovered in 2013. This is close to the Hokkaidō Government Office, about three blocks south of Sapporo Station.

Sapporo Factory

I walked east through Ōdōri Kōen or Odori Park to its east end, then alternatively north and east to the Sapporo Factory.

The Meiji government formed the Kaitakushi or the Hokkaidō Development Commission. It founded several businesses, including a brewery. Seibei Nakagawa, who had studied brewing in Germany, was hired as the brewery's chief engineer. Hisanari Murahashi, one of the Satsuma Students from Kagoshima, became manager of the associated beer garden. In 1876, the Kaitakushi Brewery was built here.

The Kaitakushi government commission was shut down in 1882, and its business properties were liquidated. The newly established Hokkaidō Prefecture government came to own the brewery in 1886.

The Sapporo Beer Company was established in 1888. It took ownership of the brewery, which had continued operating through the ownership changes.

The brewing operation moved south to Eniwa in 1989. In 1993, the factory complex was renovated and turned into a multi-level shopping mall, a movie theater multiplex, office space, and a museum.

Both multi-level shopping malls and large department stores still flourish in Japan.

A small bar sells Sapporo Beer, commemorating the 1876 founding year.

Jingisukan or "Genghis Khan barbeque" is popular in Hokkaidō — mutton cooked Korean barbeque style. With your beer, this bar offers Jingisukan style lamb jerky.

Sapporo Beer Museum

The museum is in what was built in 1890 as a factory of the Sapporo Sugar Company. It made sugar from beets until 1965. In 1987 it opened as the Sapporo Beer Museum.

A small plot demonstrates the grains and hops used to produce beer.

Part of a brewing vessel sits outside.

Admission is free.

There are exhibits on the history of the company, and on Seibei Nakagawa and his study of brewing in Germany and establishment of brewing for the Kaitakushi.

They have a collection of advertising posters through the years. This first set is from, clockwise from upper left, 1925, 1930, 1930, and 1931.

I was deep into my habit of mumbling as I wandered through Japan, pronouncing all the katakana and hiragana that I saw. That's strange, the poster at upper right from 1930 says, across the bottom, ルービ ロポッサ or:
RU-BI-RO-PO-TSU-SA
What is that about?

Ah, it's actually SA-P-PO-RO BI-RU spelled from right to left! (And "Sapporo", same as now, spelled as the original Ainu sat poro pet meaning "dry great river", spelled サッ・ポロ・ペッ or literally sa-tsu–po-ro–pe-tsu)

The characters themselves aren't reversed, they're drawn the same, but ordered in different directions. Compare the text as read right-to-left across the bottom of the upper right poster to the text read top to bottom down the upper left corners of the two bottom posters. Or, the top left one read top to bottom, then breaking to the left to a second column for BI-RU on the poster at upper left.

Sapporo Beer posters from 1925 (upper left), 1930 (upper right and lower left), and 1931 (lower right)

Sapporo Beer posters from 1958 (upper left), 1961 (lower left), 1963 (upper right), and 1967 (lower right). By that time it was always サッポロ ビール or just サッポロ.

By the late 1950s, horizontal text was all left-to-right, as seen on the second set of posters above.

The next time I stayed in a place where my innkeeper was comfortable with English, which was about a week later and two cities away, I asked about this. I got the idea that this might be Something That One Does Not Speak Of.

Kanji reform actually started at the end of the Edo Period and the early Meiji Period. But much more was done during the Occupation years of 1945–1952, especially regarding kana orthography used for phonetic spelling. Books are still printed with the text in columns read from top to bottom, proceeding from right to left. But horizontal text is now all printed from left to right.

I had seen this earlier but hadn't noticed it. Here's a closer look at the painted sign at the Sapporo Factory complex:
ルービ ロポッサ

Admission to the museum is free, but most visitors buy some of the product. I got a flight, from right to left it's one in the original Kaitakushi style, then the classic style, and then the Black Label version created in 1977.

Next❯ Hokkaidō Shrine