Nagano's ski resorts go global
Global coverage of the Olympic Winter Games helped Nagano become one of Japan’s leading winter sports destinations and made it more popular with skiers and snowboarders from overseas.
Also instrumental in Nagano’s enhanced appeal to foreign skiers were the superb skiing conditions and facilities offered by the four ski areas that hosted Olympic events: Hakuba, Nozawa Onsen, Shiga Kogen and Iizuna Kogen.
The venue for the ski jumping, downhill, super-G, Alpine and Nordic combined and cross-country events, Hakuba became increasingly popular with Korean, Australian and European visitors in the years after the Games. Offering an annual average of 11 metres of snow, challenging skiing terrain and a free shuttle service operating between its 10 resorts, Hakuba continued to grow over the next two decades. A record 367,000 foreign visitors holidayed at the ski area in the 2018/19 season, 11 per cent up on the previous year. Across the season as a whole, Hakuba welcomed 1.54 million visitors, cementing its status as one of Japan’s most popular ski areas.
The site of the biathlon events, the resort of Nozawa Onsen, has been known for centuries for its hot natural springs (onsen). It is also reputed to have the heaviest snowfall in Japan, and its 50km of trails and pistes have made it a popular haunt for foreign skiers, with 420,000 of them flocking to the resort in the 2018/19 season. To cater for the growing demand, Nozawa Onsen upgraded its facilities and installed 80 new gondolas in 2020.
The Shiga Kogen ski area hosted the men’s and women’s slalom and giant slalom races and has also developed and grown since then. With its 18 ski resorts, it is now Japan’s largest interconnected ski area and offers more than 80km of pistes and some of the country’s finest snow.
Opened in 1965 and expanded for the 1990 FIS Freestyle Ski World Cup, Iizuna Kogen was the venue for the freestyle skiing events at the Games and was known for its FIS-approved moguls course. The FIS 2001 Women’s Dual Moguls World Cup was held there, as were races at the 2005 Special Olympics World Winter Games.
Offering fewer runs than Nagano’s larger ski areas, Iizuna Kogen has struggled to attract visitors in recent years. After putting the resort on sale, the City of Nagano closed it in March 2020 when no buyers came forward. Its lifts will be removed, ski runs replanted with trees and the land returned to its natural state.