A Story Behind the Snowy, Cold City A Life with Snow and Ice ー Overcome, Utilize,
and Enjoy the Harsh Winters ー

Technologies for building houses to comfortably live through Hokkaido’s harsh winters, such as home insulation, efficient heating, and roofs suitable for snow, continue to evolve.

The Ainu people’s houses, called chise, were built with wisdom and ingenuity to stay warm. For example, they were designed so that the heat from the hearth would accumulate on the ground. On the other hand, Wajin initially found it difficult to break away from traditional Japanese-style houses, which were suited to hot and humid climates. It is easy to imagine that the shabby thatched huts built by the first settlers must have been quite cold, but the Japanese houses that were built later on were also cold, and there are many tales of hardships, such as the collar of the bedding being frozen by breathing.

Although the Tondenhei, military settlers, were provided with housing from the beginning and did not have to build their own houses, the early houses they lived in were still Japanese-style.

The Hokkaido Development Commision’s (Kaitakushi) mission was to assist the immigrants and develop the economy and industry. Improving the houses to withstand the cold was an urgent task.

In 1878, Kiyotaka Kuroda, the governor of Kaitakushi, visited Russia and found their log cabins and pechkas to have excellent cold resistance. He then built government buildings, schools, and houses for Tondenhei in the Russian-style, and learned how to make pechkas. However, the difficulty of obtaining materials and the complexity of the structure prevented its widespread use. Eventually, the American-style became the mainstream, as represented by the Clock Tower and the Former Kaitakushi Main Office Building.
However, when it came to residential buildings, Western-style architecture did not fit the lifestyle of the Japanese, who take off their shoes indoors. Therefore, around 1880, Takeshiro Nagayama, the Secretary General of the Bureau of Tonden (later the Director General of the Hokkaido Government), built a house that blended Japanese and Western styles. It also influenced the design of residential buildings built afterwards.

Brick and Sapporo Nanseki (soft stone) were used as building materials with heat-insulating and heat-storing properties, but they were expensive and used only for limited purposes, such as building warehouses. Instead of these, triangular-roofed concrete-block houses became widely popular after World War II. The groups of houses with steeply pitched triangular roofs, which snow easily slides off, were symbolic of Sapporo life. It also means that many people were finally free from the cold.

Today, high-performance insulation materials and construction methods have dramatically improved the insulation and airtightness of houses.Improvements in energy-efficient heating equipment are also advancing, making life in snowy cold regions more comfortable.

In Hokkaido, where temperatures are low, snow is powdery, but when trodden down, it becomes solid ice and does not melt easily.

One of the traditional Japanese snow removal tools is called a kosuki. It is a shovel made of a single wooden board shaped like a boat oar. It was used for carving up and dumping heavy, wet snow. In Hokkaido, to efficiently scoop powdery snow, strips were added on three sides of the wooden board. Eventually, many useful tools were created, such as snow pushers (dumps) to push large amounts of snow, tools to throw snow farther with less power, and tools to break solid ice safely. In our daily lives, these tools continue to be improved.

Transportation is essential to people’s lives. Protecting it from snow has long been a challenge for governments and transportation operators. As a countermeasure against snow, a metal shelter was adopted to completely cover the entire track in the above-ground section of the Namboku Subway Line. Sapporo also has Sasara rotary-broom snow remover, which powerfully blast snow off the tracks and helps the streetcars operate in winter. It is renowned as a symbol of winter in Sapporo. Sasara is a broom made of a bundle of bamboo strips. The broom is highly elastic and, when rotated, can blow snow away without damaging rails. It has been used in Sapporo since the Taisho era (1912-1926). Thanks to this, the streetcars are often in operation, even on days when buses are not due to heavy snowfall, giving citizens great confidence in the streetcars. The Train Bureau is currently developing a permanent facility tour course.

Moerenuma Park was designed by famous sculptor Isamu Noguchi. The inside of its symbol, the glass pyramid HIDAMARI, becomes very hot in the summer, like a greenhouse. Its air conditioning system uses the snow stored in the winter and keeps the place at a comfortable temperature in the summer.

Every year in March, the snow piled up in the park is carried into a special snow storage facility. The snow melts and becomes cool water, which is then circulated through a heat exchanger to distribute cool air to each room. The hot air in the rooms returns through the heat exchanger, warming water that melts more snow in the storage, regenerating cold water.

In order to cool water in a normal cooling system, heat sources such as electricity or gas are essential, which inevitably produce CO2. On the other hand, this snow air conditioning system uses cold water from melting snow, so it does not require a heat source and does not generate CO2.

A Toshin-Kita Snow-Melting Tank has been installed under the Sapporo-Eki Kitaguchi Plaza. The temperature inside the snow-melting tank is maintained at around 40°C to melt the snow, using hot water from the regional air-conditioning plants.

By dumping snow in the city center, the distance and time required for snow removal trucks to travel can be greatly reduced. Smooth snow removal results in a quick clearing of the roads, avoiding traffic congestion. The snow melted by the hot water is washed directly into the sewage system after the sediment is removed. In snow-free seasons, when snow melting is not required, it is also effectively used as a fire prevention tank.

The snow used to be something that had to be thrown away. Using this snow utilization technology, it can now be utilized as a natural energy source and reduce CO2 emissions. This is the future of snowy and cold regions.

You may wake up in the morning, open the curtains, and find that the landscape outside your window has turned completely white. Snow that fell overnight covers the colors of the roofs and the asphalt of the roads that were visible just the day before. The clear air makes the sky look deep blue. You never get tired of the scenery where everything sparkles and shines. Although shoveling snow is tiresome, snowy landscapes have the power to make people smile the moment they see them.

Spending such a long period of time surrounded by so much snow, there is no way not to enjoy it. Children in Sapporo are creative when playing in the snow, building snowmen, sledding, and digging caves to build secret bases.

Many adults also enjoy winter fashion, winter camping, jumping out of saunas and into the snow, and making and lighting snow candles on their doorsteps. It is perhaps the wisdom of life to try to enjoy winter.

Sapporo Snow Festival, which was first held in 1950, has become an event widely known both in Japan and abroad. In 1981, another winter event, Sapporo White Illumination was started, modeled after the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree in New York City, U.S.A. These winter events in Odori Park entertain not only the citizens of Sapporo but also many visitors.

The harsh cold of winter is the reason for the great joy of a warm spring. This is one of the blessings that life in the North gives us.

The media often mentions that, in Hokkaido, people keep their rooms warm in winter, wear a T-shirt, and eat ice cream. In fact, the inside of a highly airtight house can be very warm due to heating, so having ice cream or a cold beer makes perfect sense. It is unlike winters in other places such as Tokyo, where people wear heavy clothes and get into a kotatsu (a table with heating), leaving their backs to shiver in the cold air. On the other hand, ramen tastes exceptional when you are freezing cold from walking around in the subzero temperatures in the city. Miso ramen, in particular, is especially appreciated in winter because the layer of oil on the surface of the soup keeps ramen nice and hot.

In Sapporo, research and experimentation in agriculture to take advantage of the cold climate has also been conducted since the early Meiji period (1868-1912). In 1876, Edwin Dun was transferred to Sapporo as a foreign technical specialist hired by Kaitakushi (the Hokkaido Development Commission). He established a dairy farm in Makomanai, teaching dairy and livestock farming and production of dairy products (butter, cheese, and condensed milk). This became the foundation for the development of dairy and livestock farming in Hokkaido.

Sapporo-Taikyu, a giant cabbage, is a traditional vegetable in Sapporo. It can be preserved under the snow and is a valuable source of vitamins in winter. And what’s more, this cabbage and the chilly weather of Hokkaido are what makes for a delicious Nishin-zuke (traditional pickles using cabbage and herring).

Sapporo hosted the 1972 Winter Olympics. Winter sports have always been familiar to people in Sapporo.
 Skating was first introduced to Japan in 1877. It is said that William Brooks, a teacher at Sapporo Agricultural School (later Hokkaido University), first showed his students how to skate on the skating boots he had brought from the United States. Eventually, skating became popular among the local people. They ordered expensive import skates or asked local blacksmiths to make similar ones. It is said that they skated in Nakajima Park and the front yard of the Hokkaido Government Office.

On the other hand, skiing was introduced to Sapporo in 1908. It is said that Hans Koller, a teacher at the College of Agriculture, Tohoku Imperial University, which had been promoted from Sapporo Agricultural School the previous year, imported tools from his home country and introduced them to his students. The students went up to Mt. Sankakuyama, made a ramp on the slope to jump, and enjoyed skiing. In addition, a number of mountain lodges were built to serve as bases for traversing the mountains. Imperial Prince Chichibunomiya’s visit in Hokkaido in 1928 and the International Miyasama Ski Games that followed made skiing, as well as skating, a sport that local people enjoy as a casual recreational activity.

Today, skiing is a familiar part of the people’s lives, as it is taught in classes at elementary schools in Sapporo. Sapporo is an exceptional metropolis that has both the climate and location that are ideal for skiing and snowboarding. Here, you can enjoy night skiing in the floodlights after work. Sapporo has a variety of ski resorts in the city, both large and small. Sapporo Moiwa Ski Area is conveniently located near the city center, Sapporo Bankei Ski Area offers a snowboard park, and Sapporo Kokusai Ski Area is close to the hot spring resort area and offers abundant snow until the Golden Week holiday season.

Mt. Sankakuyama is the birthplace of skiing in Sapporo, and Miyanomori is the home of the International Miyasama Ski Games. Neither of these places have ski resorts today, but Okura, Miyanomori, and Araiyama ski jump grounds are located in the nearby mountains. Sapporo hosts numerous ski competitions every year, from junior competitions to international ones. The opportunity to watch some of the world’s highest-level competitions is one of the attractions of Sapporo, the winter sports city.