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SAPPORO SNOW FESTIVAL

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 2009

February 5th to February 11th 2009 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.

The snow structures are taken down the day after the festival finishes. This is done for safety reasons.

SAPPORO SNOW FESTIVAL PICTURES

Sapporo Snow Festival dinosaur
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!).

Sapporo Snow Festival illuminated ice building night
Internally illuminated ice building at Sapporo Snow Festival. - Chris Spackman

Sapporo Snow Festival Nagoya Castle night
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.

(Article based on Wikipedia article and used under the GNU Free Documentation License)

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