Sapporo Snow FestivalSnow carried into the city

The street built from snow

Sapporo, Japan — Winter snow-sculpture festival.

Snow is hauled into the city.

The official guidebook says the snow statues in Odori Park ran across twelve blocks. Some replicate famous buildings almost at full size, needing scaffolds and truckloads of snow to stand; the medium and smaller ones beside them are made by Sapporo residents and overseas teams, hand by hand. Up close you see the snow surface cut and pressed, with tool marks left behind.

The teacher who started this with students said a line the official guidebook keeps: snow on the ground needn't be only a nuisance — treat it as a friend and you find fun and possibility in it. The festival grew to seven days; by day you see the outlines, after dark the lights change them, so one statue can be walked twice.

Six snow statues and a snow fight

In the winter of 1950, students from several Sapporo middle schools raised six snow statues in a corner of Odori Park. The day also had a mass dance, dog sledding, a snowball fight and a capture-the-flag snow battle; the official site says over fifty thousand came. The park then held snow cleared by residents, and the students made things from it, purely for play.

Three years later came the first fifteen-metre snow statue, called The Ascension. In 1955 the Self-Defense Force took over the large statues, bringing engineering and snow-hauling skill, and the size climbed; the 10th edition in 1959 mobilised 2,500 people and first hit TV and newspapers, and the next year visitors from Honshu grew.

Makomanai site became the second venue in 1965, running forty years before closing in 2005; Satoland came in between, and Tsudome took over in 2009. The second venue's name changed a few times but always kept the play-in-snow, bring-the-kids corner.

1974: short on oil, long on foreign teams

Sapporo hosted the 1972 Winter Olympics, and the festival was seen overseas. That year a twenty-five-metre Gulliver stood; the official site says media filming the Olympics caught it too, and it became often mentioned.

In 1974 the oil crisis left trucks short of fuel, and there wasn't enough snow to fill the statues. The official site says that year they packed iron drums into the bases for volume; with less frozen mass, the statues melted faster than usual, and organisers worried they wouldn't last to closing. That same year the international snow statue contest began, with teams from six countries building together for the first time.

Since then, teams have come from Shenyang, Alberta, Munich, Sydney, Portland — places with ties to Sapporo. In 1983 Susukino opened as the third venue, ice sculptures under neon a separate line; in 1987 two days were added to make seven; in 2013 projection was added to the statues — moving, sound, colour.

Three venues, three jobs

Odori's twelve blocks are the main site, with large, medium and citizen-made small statues in a row — shapes by day, lit after dark. Susukino is close by, with ice sculptures among dining and neon, the transparent kind a different craft from the snow statues.

Tsudome is ten kilometres out, written by the official site as a snow park with indoor and outdoor areas, where hands-on things like snow slides and mazes are placed. Doing all three in a day means two train changes; cramming them in, you'll mostly remember the rushing.

The official site also covers slip-resistant walking on snow; Sapporo's winter ice is routine. Counting a hat, anti-slip soles and a place to warm up indoors matters more than fitting in one more statue.