# Where did snowboard carving come from? JSBA Interview, Part 1: Origins and definition

Why did carving go from hard to soft boots? A SnowWind interview on how snowboarding is played, its culture, names, gravity and ride quality. Original Q&A kept.

- URL: https://www.ykhokkaido.com/en/blog/jsba-interview-01-carving-origins
- Published: Date not recorded
- Section: Technique
- Series: Three JSBA Conversations (part 1)

> Compiled by SnowWind from an interview. It presents that conversation and personal views, not an official JSBA statement. The original does not record the interviewee's full name, the interview date or the original publication date; the interviewee keeps the byline “Teacher” (老師) used in the original.

---

## Why did carving move to soft boots?

> **kaku**
>
> When I looked into JSBA in Japan, my impression of carving was that it probably started in racing and competition — hard boots, Alpine style, racing for speed. So why did those techniques move over to soft boots? And how were they applied on soft boots to become this Technical style?
>
> You can barely find this history online; there is very little information. I really want to know what history this carving style has.

> **Teacher**
>
> Actually, there is a complete record. The yearbook gives a brief introduction.
>
> Snowboarding as we know it today is generally thought to have originated in the United States. Japanese trading companies imported it into Japan. Once it was imported, selling it meant teaching people how to use it. But even after you teach people how to use it, you still have to teach them how to enjoy it.
>
> From high ground to low, who gets down fastest. You ride, and you race for speed. Also, because it is built as a single board, it gets into deep snow and powder relatively easily.
>
> The people riding back then found they could put their whole body weight on the edge, so they slipped easily into a basic carving state. Nobody set out with carving as the goal from the start.

[See original graphic 1/4](/blog/jsba-interview-01-carving-origins/#source-figure-1) (in Chinese)

## First the play, then different cultures

> **Teacher**
>
> Let's start with the history of surfing. People who surfed wanted that feeling on shore, on land, too. That was the start of skateboarding.
>
> This culture of standing sideways — surfing, skateboarding — gradually spread among young people. People with no sea to surf, living in snow country, had to find their fun in the snow. They still wanted that sideways gliding feeling of surfing and skateboarding, and that is where the idea of today's snowboarding began.
>
> That way of playing was part of snowboarding from the start, and equipment features gradually strengthened it. But how it spread, and how the industry grew, differed from country to country.
>
> In Japan it began as youth culture. In Europe, though, winter sports leaned more toward — "celebrity culture" may not be quite the right term — something upscale, enjoyed at resorts.

> **Teacher**
>
> When I say Alpine skiing, what comes to mind?

> **kaku**
>
> Mostly racing.

> **Teacher**
>
> A strong image of competition, right. Many countries sit at the foot of the Alps, and ski races decided on time were popular all around them. That is why it is called Alpine skiing.

[See original graphic 2/4](/blog/jsba-interview-01-carving-origins/#source-figure-2) (in Chinese)

## Carving and sliding: what the names say about each

> **Teacher**
>
> Snowboarding is divided into Alpine style and Freestyle.
>
> Alpine style is about speed: who can go faster. Freestyle, by contrast, is less about time than about how you stay in the air, or how you play using certain structures and equipment. That is roughly how they are classified today.
>
> But back to what you originally wanted to ask: why carving came about…
>
> When the board grips the snow surface more strongly, it raises the speed, the turn shape and the quality of the track. That is where more systematic carving began.

> **kaku**
>
> I see.

> **Teacher**
>
> It used to be split into two: carving and drifting. Now we say carving and sliding (Slide).

> **kaku**
>
> Drifting? Like a drift in a car?

> **Teacher**
>
> Yes. Back then it was not called a slide turn; it was a drift turn.

> **Teacher**
>
> A sliding movement sits closer to "drifting" than to turning around a curve.
>
> Later, to tell the two apart clearly, riding that cuts and carves into the snow surface was called Carving, and sliding, whether deliberate or natural, was called Slide.

[See original graphic 3/4](/blog/jsba-interview-01-carving-origins/#source-figure-3) (in Chinese)

## Back to the board: what force are we enjoying?

> **Teacher**
>
> You carve deliberately and leave a track. Tracks may differ in width and thickness. The names and how they are defined also changed along the way.

> **Teacher**
>
> So, back to carving itself: what force was snowboarding originally played with?

> **Teacher**
>
> It is a sport of enjoying gravity.

> **Teacher**
>
> This involves science, physics. On flat ground like this, gravity points straight down. On a slope, the force can be split into a component perpendicular to the slope and a component parallel to it, along the slope.
>
> The question is how to lose as little of that along-the-slope component as possible, enjoy it, and through that raise how complete your technique is. Some people can do it and some cannot; and even for those who can, the carving can still be more complete.
>
> There has to be some way to judge it. In competition, the higher jump wins, the first to arrive wins — easy to understand. Even one centimetre can decide it.

> **Teacher**
>
> But to judge whether someone rides well, where should you look? Is speed alone enough?

[See original graphic 4/4](/blog/jsba-interview-01-carving-origins/#source-figure-4) (in Chinese)

## The original post copy

### Series opener: reflections on the interview (copy supplied earlier)

The copy as it appears in the original document, translated without edits.

Today the principal and I interviewed a JSBA veteran, one of the organisation's elders. Two moments moved me most. The first was when he said trust matters more than money, because trust can last through the whole of your life and another person's.

The other was when we got onto the relationship between carving and big backcountry mountains. Halfway through, he suddenly stood up and excused himself.

I thought a visitor must have arrived. Instead he was gone a few minutes and came back carrying a very early version of a textbook, one that had not even gone to print.

Then he pointed to the introduction and said: look, the old introduction is different from today's. It used to put more weight on the joy of riding, and on "the reason that keeps you improving" — that is, "to fly through this world like a cloud".

## Further reading

The [Chinese–Japanese snowboard glossary](/blog/snowboard-glossary-zh-ja/) (in Chinese) covers the technical terms in this post. To take the practice back onto the snow, see [SnowWind's courses](/en/courses/).

## Sources

- SnowWind | Three JSBA Conversations: compiled Traditional Chinese copy and original graphics, pp. 3–10; original post copy on p. 2.
- Interview excerpts in Chinese translation, compiled from a first-draft transcript; the original speaker bylines are kept. This English text is translated from that Chinese version.