[2025 Hakodate Attraction] Travel Guide for Hakodate City Museum of Northern Peoples (Updated Mar)
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6 review
Museums
The Hakodate City Northern Ethnic Museum is a museum that displays the culture of northern ethnic groups headed by the Ainu. The museum adopts physical display and concise explanatory panels, etc., and provides visitors with information films of the Ainu people, including where they live and different costumes, which are very vivid. In addition to seeing the rich display materials, visitors can also experience the traditional paper-cutting art of the Ainu people, and make and play their traditional musical instruments. About the Ainu The Ainu people once occupied all of Japan, and were later expelled to Ezo (now called Hokkaido) to retreat, and then lived here, and are considered to be the indigenous peoples of Japan. Later, they were excluded by the Japanese and became a minority. During the Meiji period, they were assimilated and institutionalized by the government. Today, there are very few Ainu people in Japan.
first place of entering hokkaido
Really it’s the name of the place. There is an anchor buried on the ground to indicate the moment. The location of the anchor is near tram station suehirocho , along the sea and near by Maritime self defence force base and Hakodate City Musuem of Northern People.#bucketlistreboot
Annqiqi
4
Hakodate City Museum of Northern Peoples
#thingstodo A very interesting museum about the Northern Peope’s culture and way of living. They displayed some very impressive artefacts which showed Hokkaido was such a harsh place to live in before the modern times. There’s also some interesting facts about the historical bank building which housed the museum.You can learn a lot about Hokkaido's history and the native Ainu people here. Each plaque has an English translation of the museum director's comments. They seem like a very playful and enthusiastic person😂 You can get Ainu merchandise too, but I recommend the Ainu souvenir shop Kamuiikoro nearby if it's open.
Tala_Travel10
Hakodate City Museum of Northern Peoples
#thingstodo This was a much bigger and more thorough museum than I had expected. It went into lots of aspects about the lives of northern peoples, from clothing to language to daily life. I was glad to see that the museum acknowledged that the encounters between these peoples and the Japanese was often explicitly colonial in nature, and that some of the Japanese sources that are left behind and that are relied on to tell us about the people thus have to be handled carefully.
There was information in English pretty much everywhere even if some of the translations were sometimes a bit off. There were 2 videos as well, both very informative, although one of them didn't have English subtitles.
The captions, which are written by the director, are some of the funniest and cutest I've ever read in a museum. It was a bit weird to have the director cracking jokes in the captions but I found it quite endearing too!
Overall, really great museum :)
There is an entrance fee but you can couple it with some of the other attractions in the area and save money. I got a student discount too which made my visit to 3 places about 300 yen, and I reckon that's a bargain.