SAPPORO SNOW FESTIVAL
Guide to Sapporo
Snow Festival - The Sapporo Snow Festival is held in the first week of February
every year. The Sapporo Snow Festival is Sapporo's
largest event.
The festival is best known for the ice sculpture
competition attracting artists from around the world, competing to
create the largest and most elaborate artworks from ice and snow.
Sapporo Snow
Festival 2008
February 5th to
February 11th 2008 at Odori Park, Susukino and Sapporo Satoland.
It is one of
Japan's largest winter events in Japan. Teams from outside Japan
come to participate, and the festival is thought to be an
opportunity for promoting international relations. About two million
people come to see the enormous beautiful snow statues on display in
Odori Park in central Sapporo, which is the main site of the
festival.
The subject of the statues varies, and often features an event,
famous building or person from the past year. For example, in 2004
there were statues of Hideki Matsui, the famous baseball player who
plays for the New York Yankees. There are also long ice chutes on
which people are encouraged to slide. A number of stages made of
snow are also constructed, and some events including mucical
performances are held.
The number of statues is around 300 in total in every year. The
total figures of the statues at all the festival sites in 2007 were
307 in Odori Park site, 32 in Satoland site, and 100 in Susukino
site. Most of the statues are illuminated in the evening. The
Sapporo Snow Festival Museum is located in the Hitsujigaoka
observation hill in Toyohira-ku, and displays historical materials
and media of the festival.
SAPPORO SNOW
FESTIVAL PICTURES
Giant dinosaur snow statue at Sapporo snow festival -
Brazzy
Many of the sculptures are very topical, relating to
things that have been very popular in the last year such as the latest
Japanese anime figure or Harry Potter (complete with glasses
made of snow!).
Internally illuminated ice building at Sapporo Snow
Festival. -
Chris Spackman
Snow building imitating the Nagoya Castle, Sapporo Snow
Festival -
Kinori
Sapporo Snow Festival
History
The Snow Festival began in 1950, when six local high
school students built six snow statues in Odori Park. In 1955, the
Japan Self-Defense Forces from the nearby Makomanai base joined in,
and built the first massive snow sculpture, for which the Snow
Festival has now become famous. Several snow festivals have existed
in Sapporo before the Sapporo Snow Festival, however, all of which
were suspended during World War II.
In 1974, facing Energy crisis, snow statues were built using drums.
This was due to the shortage of gasoline by the crisis, and many of
trucks to carry snows to the site were not available. In the same
year, the International Snow Statue Competition started, and since
that year, many snow statues built by teams from other countries,
especially from sister cities of Sapporo such as Munich, have come
to appear.
In years when the accumulated snowfall is low, the Self-Defense
Force, for whom participation is considered a training exercise,
brings in snow from outside Sapporo. The Makomanai base, one of
three main sites from 1965, hosted the largest sculptures, with an
emphasis on providing play space for children. This Makomanai site
was abolished in 2005, and moved to the Sapporo Satoland site
located in Higashi-ku from 2006.
Once Nakajima Park site was established as one of the festival sites
in 1990, however, it was abolished in 1992. The third site, known as
the Susukino Snow Festival (すすきの氷の祭典, Susukino Kōri no Saiten), is
the night life district of Susukino, which hosts mainly the ice
carvings. The site is determined as one of the festival sites in
1983. In every year, the Susukino Queen of Ice, a female beauty
contest, is held at the site.
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(Article based on
Wikipedia article and used under the
GNU Free Documentation License)
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