Sapporo’s snow for economic benefits

With the population of almost 1.8 million, Sapporo is the fifth largest city of Japan and also the one with heaviest snowfall. The city, which is the capital of Japan’s largest and northernmost prefecture of Hokkaido, remains under a thick blanket of snow for almost four months.

This seasonal phenomenon no doubt turns out to be a big hassle for the city administration, as regular and timely measures are required to be taken to ensure the safety passage of people, as well as vehicles and other forms transportation. There is also the additional task of overseeing the normal functioning of a heating system, which, unlike in many other parts of the country, becomes essential for during the long winter.

All this is expensive and compels the city to bear an extra burden on its financial health. Hence, there always had been the need to find out possible ways of using the snow in a way that would eventually bring some kind of economic benefit. Sapporo had precisely been thinking on those lines for quite some time and a number of measures taken in the recent past are already bringing economic dividends.

One of the earliest among such initiatives is the Sapporo Snow Festival, which is held every year during the first half of February, where colourful displays in the forms of famous structures or installations depicting stories of events made from ice and snow are attracting more visitors every year and thus creating new economic opportunities for the local businesses.
Sapporo Snow Festival started in 1950 as a yearly event providing the rare opportunity of fun and festivity to the local population at a time when in post-world war II economic ruins there hardly had been any other recreation within the vicinity. It also allowed people to sustain the harsh winter by getting involved in outdoor activities. Over the period of more than six decades, the festival has expanded and has become one of the most colourful winter events in Japan. Every year preparation for the festival starts right after the New Year vacation when various groups and organisations start building snow structures to catch the attention of visitors. Some of the structures are massive in size. With illuminations at night accompanied by musical performances they turn the whole area a real festival arena. This year’s 67th festival kicked off on 5 February.
The number of people visiting Sapporo during the Snow Festival has been increasing in recent years and with that there is also a rising trend in economic benefits the festival is generating. In 2015, a total of 3.35 million people visited the festival, which is slightly lower than the figure recorded a year earlier.
But a significant shift is gradually being seen in the figure of foreign visitors who come to Sapporo during the festival time. Last year 128,000 foreigners visited the festival, of which majority came from countries and regions like Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan where there is no snowfall at all. For visitors from tropical regions of Southeast Asia, the attraction of Sapporo is two-fold as they can experience firsthand the snowfall while enjoying seeing the beautiful structures made of ice and snow. No wonder the Snow Festival last year generated the significant amount of 41.9 billion yen. The organisers of the festival are hoping for an even bigger turnover this year.
The snow structure that Sapporo city administration is building at the festival venue this year is that of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre cut in half through the middle to display the interior to the audience. A 15-minute stage performance of the romantic drama “A Winter’s Tale” by a Shakespearean drama troupe on a stage made of snow will add further to the attraction.
During a recent visit to Sapporo at the end of January, I had the opportunity of seeing the construction work of that huge snow structure. Takamoto Morioka of Tourism Planning Section of the Sapporo city government is a snow statue specialist involved in the festival preparations for more than three decades. With the structure gradually taking shape, he feels happy and content with the work and he is hopeful that what they had been making will become one of the main attractions of the festival.
But the sad side of his hard work is the relative short duration of snow structures. This year, for example, the festival will come to an end on 18 February and then with the approach of the spring in early March, all those lovely structures will start melting. This is the time when Morioka is usually laden with sadness and the people then wish it all comes to an end without further delay.
Another important aspect of using Sapporo’s heavy snowfall for generating economic benefits is winter sporting events. Sapporo has a relatively long history of such initiatives. As a host city of the 1972 Winter Olympic Games, Sapporo is already known to winter sports enthusiasts for its numerous world-class facilities.
The city is now getting ready to host the 2017 Asian Winter Games. This will be the 8th Asian winter games event in which 1,500 athletes and officials from 30 countries and regions are expected to participate. Talking to foreign reporters recently about various initiatives being taken by the city of Sapporo to revitalise the local economy, city mayor Katsuhiro Akimoto briefed them about the preparation of Asian Winter Games as well, and said that Sapporo has allocated roughly 6.4 billion yen for the 2017 event and is expecting economic benefits generating from the Games to be almost double of that amount.
The relative lower budgetary allocation for next year’s game was made possible due to the utilisation of already existing facilities. Though most of the games are scheduled to be held in Sapporo, a smaller number of events have already been allocated to the city of Obihiro, less than a four-hour drive from Sapporo.

(Tokyo, 4 February 2016)