Hakodate City Central Library

Hakodate City Central Library (函館市中央図書館) is a public library in Hakodate, Hokkaidō, Japan. The library is known in particular for its important collection of northern materials and for its Takuboku Library (啄木文庫).

History
The origins of a library in Hakodate lie in the opening of a society library at the home of Okada Kenzō (岡田健蔵) in 1907. Two years later, the private membership Hakodate Library opened in municipal premises in Hakodate Park (函館公園). In 1915, with a donation from Sōma Teppei (相馬哲平), construction of a dedicated five-storey library began, completed the following year; this building is important as an early example of a reinforced concrete building on the island (cf. Ōtani Hongan-ji Hakodate Betsu-in). In the first year of the Shōwa era (1926), city councillors approved the design of a new municipal library, three storey, again in reinforced concrete. With the approval of the private Hakodate Library's director Hirade Kisaburō (平出喜三郎), its entire collection was donated and transferred, and in 1928 the new Hakodate City Library (市立函館図書館) opened to the public. Duty to the city's growth, a number of local libraries were opened in the following decades. In 2005 the new Hakodate City Central Library opened across the road from Goryōkaku.