By Natsuko Ito

The 53rd Sapporo Snow Festival, which has 312 ice and snow statuesﾑ206 at the Odori Site, 6 at the Makomanai Site, and 100 at the Susukino Siteﾑwas held from February 5th to 11th.

I wonder if people noticed that this year's statues were different from last year's. The Self Defense Forces created all five the large statues, while volunteers made two.

The citizen volunteers created the "Raccoon Dog vs Botchan Train" at 4-Chome, and "Journey into the History of China with Konan" at 10-Chome.

The reproduction of Matsuyama Castle, which stands in Matsuyama city, celebrates the 400th anniversary of its foundation this year. Matsuyama is famous for its association with raccoon dogs, and Sapporo citizens wanted to create a train in the shape of a Raccoon Dog.

After an interval of a half of century, the year 2002 marks the 30th anniversary of normalization of diplomatic relations between Japan and China. China has a long history and many world heritage sites, such as the "Great Wall of China" and the "Terracotta Army." For this large snow sculpture, the volunteers at the Sapporo Snow Festival built these well-known treasures of China together with some popular Japanese animated film characters from "Detective Konan," which navigated us to a world of romantic history.

I talked to Mr. Ota, a subsection chief in the Atsubetsu ward office who was one of the members that made "Raccoon Dog vs Botchan Train." He has made medium and large snow statues with Self Defense Forces. When he participated in the Snow Festival for the first time, he learned the difference between watching and making.

He made no less than 13-meter-tall statues with staff volunteers, citizen volunteers and students leaded by active and retired Self Defense Forces this year. He tried all sorts of things, like making statues, parts of faces, carves, clouds, and so on. When he looked up at the snow statue which was finished after nearly one month (his participation term was about 10 days) he was happy to see the parts he made by himself. There were more than three-hundred volunteers, including twenty-two of them from outside of Hokkaido, including some who took part from Mie Prefecture which has no snow; Some tourists take the trouble to come and watch the process of making the statues, so Mr. Ota said he felt it would be worth doing. He also said he had participated 4 times, so he had gotten used to it, but was always under the guidance by Self Defense Forces. He says if he gets the chance, he will join again.

One middle aged couple said that the large statues compare poorly with last years', and the citizen's small statues stood out. And an elderly woman who lives in Ishikari city said that she understood the citizen's pleasure in making statues, but she wanted them to make larger statues for tourists. When I had interviews, some people told me that they felt sorry about the melting statues because of the warm winter.

The idea of giving citizens a larger hand in the Snow Festival was successful. That is why tourists didn't notice any big change. But if the festival is created by citizens without the help of the Self Defense Forces in the future, we will have some problems bringing in and piling up snow. Along with the International Snow Contest, we should here after try to keep Sapporo Snow Festival as a big-scale event.