Concentrations of N2O and 222Rn were observed in the snowpack and the soil from the subboreal region of Japan during the winter of 1996 to 1997. These observations were made to validate 222Rn as a proxy for temporal variation of N2O diffusivity within a snowpack having many ice lenses in order to estimate N2O emission through the snowpack to the atmosphere, to make a better evaluation of soil N2O production rate underlying the snowpack using 222Rn mixing rate in soil, and to clarify the factors influencing N2O flux and the production rate in subboreal ecosystems. Using a one-dimensional vertical diffusion model under a nonsteady state condition, N2O flux markedly increased from 0.0034 to 18 ¿g N/m2/d with snow depth of an average of 4.1 ¿ 4.4 ¿g N/m2/d (1σ). The wide range of low N2O flux results from the surface soil freezing in early winter and the existence of multilayered ice lenses within the snowpack throughout the winter. When the 222Rn mixing rate varied from 4.0 cm/d to 16 cm/d, the soil N2O production rate underlying the snowpack significantly increased -3.4 to 48 mg N/m3/h with an average of 22 ¿ 15 mg N/m3/h (1σ). The soil temperature had a remarkably positive correlation with snow depth (R = 0.85). Therefore it can be concluded that the deeper snow cover does not prevent but does promote the production of N2O in soil and its emission to the atmosphere in the subboreal region of Japan. Although we estimated some N2O flux through the snowpack during the winter, based on the results presented here and published elsewhere, the winter regional N2O emission rate through the snowpack is estimated to be 0.07 Tg N/season, which corresponds to 30% of the annual N2O emission in the boreal ecosystem in the Northern Hemisphere. This unambiguously suggests that further data on the winter N2O fluxes are needed to assess the contribution of natural soils to the regional N2O budget and to evaluate impacts of the seasonality of the N2O emission rate on tropospheric N2O distribution.