Measuring the weight of snow that has accumulated on the Daisetsuzan Mountain Range Nakaya Ukichiro 1900-1962
“Snowflakes are letters sent from heaven.” These were the words of physicist Nakaya Ukichiro when he successfully created artificial snow crystals for the first time in 1936. Nakaya discovered that the shape of snow crystals depends on the temperature and water vapor content, and explained this relationship in a diagram named the Nakaya Diagram. Stating that “Japan’s resources are water and snow”, in 1948, he conducted a survey on the Daisetsuzan Mountain Range, which is considered to be the location with the greatest abundance of these resources in Hokkaido, and measured the total amount of snow that had accumulated in the headwaters of the Chubetsu River.
Beautiful Snow Crystals Yoshida Rokuro 1919-1995
In 1944, Yoshida Rokuro, who was an employee of Nippon Film Company, was dispatched to the Institute of Low Temperature Science at Hokkaido University, where he met Nakaya Ukichiro. Since then, snow became his lifework, and while visiting Mt. Asahidake, he devised the “two-color lighting technique with single light source method” through which snow crystals can be seen sterically. Using handmade photography equipment, Yoshida shot the 1960 film “Snow: Observing its Crystals”. Afterwards, he produced collections of photographs, such as “Snow Crystals”. In addition, as part of his work as a director and cameraman, Yoshida has produced many pedagogical and scientific films, as well as films connected with the imperial family.
