Sapporo Clock Tower
Meiji-era wooden drill hall crowned by a still-ringing Boston clock, Japan's oldest surviving clock tower.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Sapporo Clock Tower traces a wooden drill hall built in eighteen seventy-eight for Japan's first agricultural college, and the American educator William Smith Clark who shaped its curriculum before leaving Hokkaido after less than a year. It follows how Governor Kiyotaka Kuroda decided the hall needed a proper timepiece, and the Boston-built clock ordered from the E. Howard Watch and Clock Company. Listen for the bell as you look up at the white tower, still keeping the same time it kept over a frontier settlement of dirt roads and log cabins.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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