Sculptors devastated over loss of ice castle
Three champion ice sculptors from Japan are returning home today, their dream of creating a 45-ton castle for the city's First Night celebration reduced to a shapeless pile and a slowly expanding puddle on Boston Common.
"We had hoped to follow this project through to its completion," lead sculptor Masashige Kato said through a translator. "We're sorry it had to be terminated."
The replica of Edo Castle, planned for a decade and executed through hour upon hour of delicate sculpting, was intended to help launch the 100th anniversary of the Japan Society of Boston, a group dedicated to cross-cultural education and exchange between the peoples of Japan and New England.
Society members raised nearly $40,000 for the project, in cooperation with the Hokkaido-Massachusetts Sister State Association. They sold chocolates in gold wrapping inscribed with the shape of the castle, and hosted elaborate fund-raising dinners and dozens of meetings in Japan and New England.
Then, society leaders said, they paid First Night $30,000 for ice, security, and some equipment.
On their first visit to Boston, the three sculptors flew in from Sapporo, Japan, and began work the day after Christmas on the icy replica of Edo Castle.
In Japan, the original castle -- now the site of the emperor's imperial palace in Tokyo -- was home to the Tokugawa Shogunate, rulers of the country for more than 250 years.
Iko Burns, a member of the Japan Society board, chose it as a sculpture subject because she wanted an icon that was unmistakably Japanese.
Despite the energy the sculptors brought to the project, it soon became apparent that the warm weather would be a formidable adversary. On Dec. 29, First night officials advised the sculptors to give up, Burns said.
But the sculptors, who won first prize last year at the Hokkaido Snow Festival, decided to work during cooler night hours instead.
Kato, Mitsutoshi Kudo, and Kyoichi Yoshikawa scraped and cut and molded the tons of ice at the site, near the intersection of Beacon and Charles streets, until 4:30 a.m. New Year's Eve. At 5 a.m., part of the castle collapsed.
By about 10 a.m. -- 90 minutes before Mayor Thomas M. Menino was to arrive for a First Night opening ceremony in front of the castle -- celebration officials deemed unsafe what was left and the structure was dismantled.
American sculptors who had pitched in to help the Japanese team wiped tears from their eyes as they watched a First Night official -- the same one responsible for wrapping the ice in hay and plastic to protect it each day this week -- threw a forklift into gear and begin taking the castle apart, chunk by chunk.
"No one else wanted to do it," Burns said.
The sculptors' grand, 20-foot creation was quickly turned into a 4-foot pile.
Kato, Kudo, and Yoshikawa remained in bed, devastated by the news that came in an early-morning phone call from the Japan Society president.
"I was very confused in my mind," Kato said.
Nonetheless, a celebration to mark the completion of the castle sculpture went ahead as planned on New Year's Eve at Hampshire House on Beacon Street. There were few smiles, though, as the three sculptors stood mostly expressionless, holding glasses of champagne while officials from the Japan Society made heartfelt speeches about the project.
"Even though the castle isn't standing, it's the process that's important," Burns said later.
There was talk at the Hampshire House gathering that the three artists might make an appearance during First Night festivities to do carving demonstrations on what was left of their castle.
But the sculptors had other plans.
As in traditional Japanese New Year's Eve celebrations, they sat down to a meal of toshi koshi soba, or buckwheat noodles. The sculptors, Burns said, tried to "swallow the pain and pleasure of the year past" and begin the next one anew.
"Boston is a great town, and I'd like to come back again," Kato said. "Maybe we'll try again next year."
Donovan Slack can be reached at dslack@globe.com.
