Hokkaido Jingu
Forested Shinto shrine founded to guard a frontier settlement, ringed by fourteen hundred cherry trees.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Hokkaido Jingu in Sapporo opens in the eighteen sixties, when officials of the Kaitakushi, Japan's frontier development agency, decided the fledgling settlement of Sapporo needed a spiritual anchor before it had streets. It follows Emperor Meiji's eighteen sixty-nine order to carry three pioneer deities north from Tokyo, and the ceremony that seated them on this rise above the frontier town in eighteen seventy-one under the name Sapporo Shrine. Walk the approach lined with roughly fourteen hundred cherry trees, planted across ground the Kaitakushi once logged as raw wilderness, and come in late April to see it turn pink and white.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Sapporo Fushimi Inari Shrine
Vermilion torii gates climbing a forested mountainside, framed by deep snow in winter.
Historical Village of Hokkaido
Open-air museum of over fifty relocated pioneer-era buildings from Hokkaido's frontier settlement.
Hōhei Kan
Ultramarine-blue wooden hotel built to host Emperor Meiji during Hokkaido's first imperial visit.
旧永山武四郎邸 / 旧三菱鉱業寮
Meiji-era pioneer's home blending a Japanese study with a Western parlor, later a mining company's private lodge.
Sapporo Clock Tower
Meiji-era wooden drill hall crowned by a still-ringing Boston clock, Japan's oldest surviving clock tower.
Sapporo Agricultural School's Farm No.2
Wooden red-roofed dairy barn built by a Meiji-era frontier farm, among Japan's oldest Western-style farm buildings.