History
Motomachi Station (number H03) is a Sapporo Municipal Subway station on the Tōhō Line in Higashi-ku, Sapporo, Hokkaido. It opened on 2 December 1988 with the Tōhō Line's inaugural Sakaemachi–Hōsui-Susukino segment — the station's pre-construction working title was "Kita-Kō-Higashi" — and platform-edge doors were activated on 9 March 2017. Higashi-ku, the city's second-most populous ward (after Kita-ku), traces its modern origins to 1866 when Ōtomo Kametarō began farming on the Fushiko-gawa under shogunate orders — the "Ōtomo-bori" channel he dug is the upstream origin of the Sōsei-gawa — and the area was incorporated into Sapporo with the 1955 merger of Sapporo-mura. Apple- and grape-growing gave way over the Meiji and Taishō eras to onion farming (notably the "Sapporo-ki" variety), and breweries — including the present-day Sapporo Beer Museum site — became part of the local industrial fabric.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-25.
Notes
The Higashi-ku article notes that the Sapporo Brewery's 1888 sugar-refining plant — the predecessor of today's Sapporo Beer Museum and the malt-house of present-day Sapporo Breweries — has its origins in Higashi-ku, and the "Sapporo-Naebo Industrial Heritage Group" of nearby factories and memorial halls was selected as a Hokkaido Heritage item in 2004.