Sapporo Factory about 60 years ago and today

History of Sapporo Factory

The center of the City of Sapporo, Hokkaido, sits on an alluvial fan that the Toyohira River spread where it leaves the mountains. The five points measured at this location fall between 17.2 m and 20.8 m, and the difference between the north, the lowest, and the south, the highest, is only 3.6 m. The fan slopes from southeast to northwest so gently that you would not notice it walking. Because it is land where a thick layer of gravel mixed with stones has built up, water passes easily underground. The past aerial photographs open in four eras, 1945-50, 1961-69, 1974-78 and 1984-86, and can be compared with the latest one. If you go through the four in order, the fineness of the blocks hardly moves, yet the river alone turns into something else.

The grid came first

The street layout of Sapporo was drawn using the Sosei River, which flows north-south, and a wide avenue running east-west as base lines. Addresses are counted in jo and chome, and the dimensions of the blocks are almost the same everywhere. On top of this uniform mesh, things of other dimensions were placed later. The grid was there before the factory. At the beginning of the Meiji era, the Hokkaido Development Commission (Kaitakushi) built a beer brewery on the east side of the Sosei River. That was in 1876. There was land where barley and hops could be grown, and water that had passed through the gravel layer could be drawn. The cold of winter suited work that needed to keep temperatures low without the help of machines. Water and cold drew brewing here. When the railway from the Otaru side came through, the means of carrying raw materials and products were also in place. Using several blocks bundled together as one lot could not help but stand out within this fine grid.

Until the river changed shape

The 1945-50 photograph is black and white, and the whole of it is a little washed out with brightness. Even so, you can read that almost the entire frame is filled with narrow streets and small roofs. Through the center, a band of railway runs east-west from the left edge to the right and branches to the northeast toward the right. At the end of that branch, in the upper right of the frame, is wide land where dozens of parallel lines are laid side by side, opened at dimensions different from the surrounding rows of houses. In the upper right corner a meandering streak of water remains. In the lower right of the frame the Toyohira River flows diagonally, spreading bands of white sand on both sides. The blocks across the river do not have their grid aligned with those on this side. Along the top edge, farmland divided into bright rectangles can be seen together.

If you switch to 1961-69, the tone of the frame sinks into gray, and the difference between light and dark becomes smaller. The mesh of streets becomes finer still, and many of the rectangles that were farmland have been replaced by roofs. In the middle of the left edge there is a bundle of parallel lines, which connects to the band of railway in the center. A little above the middle, several structures that look round from above are placed, and in a photograph of nothing but straight lines, only they have a different shape. On the wide land in the upper right, long, narrow bright roofs line up diagonally in neat rows. The Toyohira River still meanders, and the bands of white sand remain at the same width as in the previous era.

From 1974-78 the photographs are in color. The coloring brings out the green of the trees strongly, and the trees between the blocks can be clearly made out. The river has changed most. Both banks have been straightened, the water surface has become a narrow band, and beside it a green floodplain and an ocher riverbed line up. The flow that had spread white sand as far as it liked now passes within a set width. North of the band of railway, large buildings with a mix of reddish-brown, green and white roofs line up, forming a single surface with the bundle of tracks. Along the right edge a tall structure running diagonally appears, and in the lower left white mid-rise and high-rise buildings begin to increase in number.

The 1984-86 photograph is bluish and dark as a whole. Blue predominates among the roof colors, with reddish brown mixed in. The band of railway extends from the left edge to the middle as a thick white line, and beyond that it joins with the bundle of tracks in the upper right. You can also read that it has been lifted up off the ground. In the city center in the lower left, white buildings stand without gaps, with hardly any blue roofs mixed in. The round structures are still in the middle, and the land in the upper right also keeps its bundle of lines and large roofs. The river's floodplain has orderly sections, and the number of bridges crossing it has increased.

Through the four photographs, the mesh of the blocks and the position of the band of railway hardly move. The reading that comes out of this sequence is that only the river changed shape. Because this is flat land close to the river, it is worth checking the assumed extent of flooding on the city's official hazard map before walking around.

After the brewing moved away

Brewing is work of water and temperature, and increasing the volume needs wide floor space. Widening the floor space within the grid of the city center was difficult, and at the end of the 1980s, the brewing operations were moved to wide land outside the city. The old buildings built of brick and the one lot made of bundled blocks remained. At the beginning of the 1990s, a large commercial facility opened on that site. As of 2026 it operates under the name Sapporo Factory, and the brick buildings are in use without having been torn down. Another example of a former beer brewery replaced by a wide block is Yebisu Garden Place in Tokyo.

The outline that remained and the sequence of values

In today's photograph the band of railway runs on a tall structure, and large white roofs gather on both sides of it. The left half is filled with tall buildings, and the shadows falling on the streets trace the mesh of the grid. On the land in the upper right a bundle of parallel lines remains, and long, narrow blue and reddish-brown buildings are also in the same position. The floodplain of the Toyohira River has a wide band of green, the water surface is narrow, and bright sandbars show on the inside. The housing across the river is denser than in any of the four eras. Toward the left in the middle, a little south of the band of railway, there is a large roof that uses a whole lot together, with a wide flat surface beside it.

The land price survey point is in Kikusui 2-jo 1-chome, Shiroishi Ward, residential land 745 m in a straight line from this location. The official land price (Chika Koji) was cut year after year from 155,000 yen per square meter in 1995, and 88,000 yen in 2003 and 2004 is the lowest up to the 2026 publication. After recovering to 111,000 yen in 2008, it sank once more to 90,300 yen in 2012 and 2013. The rise has two troughs within it. After that it rose every year, and in the records up to the 2026 publication, 195,000 yen in 2026 became the upper end. That is more than twice the bottom.

Even after the place where barley was boiled left, the outline of the one lot made of bundled blocks remained. The grid was left untouched, and the river was worked on. Try telling these two apart while switching the era buttons.