By KAEDE SANO/ Staff Writer
February 12, 2023 at 18:29 JST
The snow sculpture of the Catbus from anime “My Neighbor Totoro” wins the top prize in the citizen sculpture event at the Sapporo Snow Festival on Feb. 11. (Kaede Sano)
SAPPORO—A cool reproduction of the Catbus and sisters Satsuki and May in popular anime “My Neighbor Totoro” won the top prize in the citizen sculpture event at the 2023 Sapporo Snow Festival.
There were 58 entries for the contest, which was held for the first time in three years.
The “My Neighbor Totoro” snow sculpture gained 1,129 votes in a public poll held on Feb. 11, the last day of the festival.
It was created by a team from Toko Electrical Construction Co.’s Hokkaido branch in Sapporo.
The team had previously won second place with a snow sculpture of Totoro from the anime.
“We created our sculpture for this year in the hope of bringing smiles to children and tourists from overseas,” a team member said.
The team began preparing for the competition in late December. Forty company employees participated, including some from outside of Hokkaido.
The contest had been canceled in the previous two years because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Some virus-related rules were in place for the contest this year.
Entrants were given three days to create their sculptures, rather than the usual five days. And the number of team members who could join in the actual production was limited to five.
“I was initially worried if we could finish the work in a shortened period of time,” the winning team leader said. “But we could make a more elaborate sculpture than our previous one. We paid close attention to details to make our Catbus look like the Catbus in the anime from every angle.”
The second prize, with 458 votes, went to the youth division of the Sapporo painting contractors’ cooperative union for its sculpture of Anya in a fox dance from anime “Spy x Family.”
A group called Kitakitsune received 358 votes to win third prize for its sculpture of baseball superstar Shohei Ohtani.
The top three winners are automatically entered into the following year’s event.
Sapporo Snow Festival returns after 2-year COVID-19 hiatus
February 4, 2023
Dinosaur, baseball park among designs for snow festival
January 16, 2023
Sapporo snow fest to be held on-site for 1st time in 3 years
October 10, 2022
Sapporo Snow Festival to return in February on a reduced scale
December 24, 2021
Ghibli’s Catbus ready to roll off the big screen in Aichi theme park
February 10, 2023
A peek through the music industry’s curtain at the producers who harnessed social media to help their idols go global.
A series based on diplomatic documents declassified by Japan’s Foreign Ministry
Here is a collection of first-hand accounts by “hibakusha” atomic bomb survivors.
Cooking experts, chefs and others involved in the field of food introduce their special recipes intertwined with their paths in life.
A series about Japanese-Americans and their memories of World War II
