Hokkaido University Library

Introduction

The main Hokkaido University Library stands at Kita 8-jo Nishi 5 on the Sapporo campus, an ochre modern block facing a gently sloping central lawn, one of the most photographed everyday views at the university. Its nature needs stating first: this is a working university library, not a visitor attraction. Members of the public can show identification at the service desk for a one-day reading pass, but borrowing books is limited to Hokkaido residents aged twenty or over, and hours shift during exam periods and long holidays, so anyone coming mainly for photographs is better off spending the time outdoors. The most notable collection is the Northern Materials Room on the fourth floor, set up in 1967 from a 1937 research unit, holding close to 30,000 Japanese and Chinese volumes on Hokkaido as well as Sakhalin, the Kurils, the Aleutians, Alaska, Siberia and the Arctic, plus maps, photographs, manuscripts and letters from the foreign advisers to the old Colonisation Commission; much of it is searchable in an online northern-materials database. Its rare book rooms include the collections of Inazo Nitobe, Katsusuke Sato and other figures tied to Sapporo Agricultural College, the university's predecessor. For most visitors the campus is the real destination: the ginkgo avenue in late autumn, the William S. Clark statue, the Furukawa Hall and the free Hokkaido University Museum are all within a short walk; the lawn lies under snow in winter and under students in summer shade. Treat the library as one marker on that walk rather than arriving expecting an exhibition.

✨ Highlights

🛈 Practical Info