Hokkaido Ice Festivals

Europeans and North Americans tend to think of Canadian or Scandinavian show festivals when they imagine ice palaces and frozen sculptures. For example, the Quebec City Winter Carnival, (December 2001, The Cultured Traveler) an annual pre-Lenten blast, regularly draws 1 million visitors to its array of balls, parades, fanciful ice structures and general cold-weather merriment.

So it adds to the fun to learn that East Asians, millions of whom are no strangers to deep winters, have their own set of long established winter festivals that more than match their European and North American counterparts in pageantry and whimsy. For example, the festival in Harbin, China, is one of mainland Asia’s top annual winter events.

But perhaps the Asian festivals most attractive to First World travelers are four events held annually on Hokkaido, the northernmost island of the Japanese Archipelago and site of the 1972 Winter Olympics at Sapporo. They are the Asahikawa International Ice Sculpture Festival, the Sounkyo Ice Fall Festival, the Abashiri Drift Ice Festival and the Sapporo Snow Festival.

The Japanese do at these festivals pretty much the same thing that the Swedes or Quebeckers do at theirs: carve elaborate ice sculptures, build temporary structures that they illuminate from within at night, hold winter-themed competitions and eat a lot to maintain their dark month metabolisms.

Hokkaido, which many Japanese jokingly refer to as “our Wild West,” is Japan’s version of Alaska or western Alberta – a mountainous, forested land that receives heavy winter snowfall. Since most people associate Japan with the more temperate climes of Honshu and Kyushu islands, they tend to think of Hokkaido as a Yukon-esque outpost, well off the mainstream of Japanese culture. That stereotype carries some elements of truth – most Japanese do prefer warmer, less out-of-the-way locations – but Hokkaido is one of those places where a little digging (not just in snow) reveals some pleasant discoveries.

For one thing, Hokkaido is a little less formal than the rest of Japan. That’s the result of distance, the need to adjust to a climate that is no respecter of formality and the region’s attractiveness to people who want to live in Japan but in a place that’s a little less starched around the collar.

Add to that a First-World level of technology and services – electronic communications, airports, hospitals, schools, shops, highways, hotels – as well as traditional Japanese hospitality, and the attractiveness of Hokkaido in winter becomes apparent.

But beyond the comforts, sophistication and relative level of familiarity it offers, Hokkaido is an uncrowded, intensely green land, surrounded by deep ocean and the site of some of the best bird watching on earth. Many ice festival visitors head out to the island’s forests, lakes and marshlands to see cranes, sea eagles, swans, ducks and auklets in abundance.

By Patrick Totty