Hokkaido University
Sprawling campus born from an eighteen-seventies frontier college, with a poplar avenue and a bust of its founding professor.
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About this audio guide
This guide to Hokkaido University in Sapporo opens with a puzzle: why a professor who spent only eight months here in 1876 still has his words carved into the campus gates. It follows William Smith Clark, a Civil War veteran and Massachusetts chemistry professor brought in to found the Sapporo Agricultural College, through the frontier classroom he built with two American colleagues and a handful of Japanese students, teaching farming, botany and a restless American optimism. Look for his bust standing quietly on the Central Lawn behind the college he built.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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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.
Sapporo Clock Tower
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北海道大学ポプラ並木
Century-old poplar row on a shaded woodchip path, rebuilt tree by tree after a typhoon tore through its canopy.
Sapporo Hitsujigaoka Observation Hill
Sweeping hilltop pasture with grazing sheep and a raised-arm statue overlooking the city plain.
Hokkaido University Ginkgo Avenue
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Historical Village of Hokkaido
Open-air museum of over fifty relocated pioneer-era buildings from Hokkaido's frontier settlement.