BRUSHES WITH NATURE

On the snowy Japanese island of Hokkaido, a rich seam of creativity and craftsmanship is deeply rooted in the physical world-and in a sacred Ainu tradition that has survived here for centuries

- Danielle Demetriou

It's hard not to stare at Yoko Arano's socks. The spry 89-year-old is otherwise sharply attired, from her neat trouser suit to the amber beads around her neck. Yet her unusual hosiery, covered in Pollock-like ink splatterings, hints at another story.

Arano is one of Japan's most celebrated calligraphy artists. I'm standing in her Niseko studio, alongside local gallerist Kiyoe Hosokawa, who introduced us only minutes earlier. Beyond the windowpane, snow is falling in thick, cartoonish tufts. But in this cosy, light-flooded space, where signs of Arano's craft abound-artworks drying on walls, folded newspapers, ink splashes across floors-time feels distant.

A heater hisses gently as Arano slips on overalls over her clothes and removes her necklace before laying paper on the floor. After a moment of stillness, her performance begins. With a low groan, she bends her knees, hunches her back, and, with a primal force, lifts a knee-high brush from a bucket, its bushy mass of horsehair weighted with syrupy black ink. Splashed onto the paper, it dances across the whiteness before taking the softly blurred shape of a Japanese kanji character. Seconds later, Arano pauses and, with a final groan, heaves the brush back into the bucket. She stands and surveys her wild abstraction before slipping smoothly back into conversation. "I chose the kanji teinei, which means 'polite"," she says, smiling, "because it's a nice, warm feeling meeting you today."

For a lot of people, Hokkaido means one thing: snow, or whatever you want to call snow-yuki, in Japanese; upas, in the Indigenous Ainu language; or Japow, a hip local contraction of Japan and powder. Though it is the least populated and northernmost of Japan's islands-closer to Russia than to Tokyo-Hokkaido attracts a booming, enthusiastic winter sports crowd, which is drawn by the light, fluffy mixture that blankets its mountains each year.