Hōhei Kan

This guide to Hōhei Kan in Sapporo starts with an oddly vivid detail: walls painted an ultramarine blue rare enough that the pigment had to come from Europe. It traces the frontier hotel built in 1881 by the Kaitakushi development commission to impress Emperor Meiji on his first visit to Hokkaido, and the craftsmen who raised it in a town of unpainted timber. You'll hear how the building later moved wholesale across the city and spent decades as a wedding hall. Stand close to that blue paint and consider what a five-year-old frontier town was trying to prove.