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Japanese photographer Keiji Sato first encountered the region of Hariusu in Hokkaido about ten years ago, seeing its “image of a raging winter in Ishikari Bay” appear in the train window. Sato would visit Hokkaido again in the future, passing through this area each time. “Finally, I just couldn’t resist any longer and boarded an airplane to Hokkaido expressly for the purpose of visiting that place”, he writes in his afterword. He began to capture Hariusu in the balmy summer and during the harsh winter.

His photographs – collected in the book “Cold Town Hariusu/Oshoro” (“Oshoro” is the Ainu name for this place) – paint a dreamlike, almost fantastical image of Hariusu’s landscape. Dipped in blue, almost purple-ish colors, Sato chronicles the snowy winter sceneries, from large rocks on the beach, thick snowflakes, huts aching under the weight of the snow, walls covered in frost to surfers braving the cold sea, in images that conjure an almost otherworldly atmosphere.

All text – including Keiji Sato’s afterword – included in Japanese and in English translation.