Omigoshi!
Japanese festival comes home
by Christopher Key
For 34 years, the Japanese community in Vancouver, B. C., has celebrated its culture with the Powell Street Festival in Oppenheimer Park. Last year the park was undergoing an extensive renovation as part of the city’s efforts to spruce up its downtown East Side for the Olympics and the festival had to be held in Woodland Park. The festival came back home this weekend and it was a joyous homecoming.
Vancouver has a huge Japanese community and this festival is, in part, a way of keeping their younger members cognizant of their history and culture. It’s also a way to introduce the gaijin (strangers, foreigners) to one of the oldest and most fascinating cultures in the world. The Japanese themselves were gaijin in Canada and suffered some of the same inhumane treatment their American counterparts did in World War II. That experience has led them to be extraordinarily inclusive in their celebrations and made this gaijin feel most welcome.
My attendance at the festival was supposed to be a time of relaxation and I hadn’t anticipated writing a review. So I left my camera at home so you’ll have to settle for word pictures of the event. Except, of course, for a photo of me in my summer kimono called jinbei san. Frankly, the only thing that might make me look remotely authentic in Japanese costuming might be a sumo diaper and we seriously don’t want to go there.
Photo credit - Reiko Kawakami
One of the reasons Oppenheimer Park is home for the festival is because the Japanese community planted cherry trees there years ago to help cement relations with their new homeland. The cherry trees are still there thanks to the sensitivity of the city and I was appreciative of their shade on this sunny weekend.
There are so many things to see and do that it is difficult to decide where to focus your attention. The musical and dancing acts on the mainstage occupied most of my attention partly because I’m a huge fan of taiko, the Japanese art of drumming. This festival is inclusive enough that the taiko groups incorporated some Brazilian and First Nations influences.
The music focused on Japanese performers, but they ranged from heavy metal to folk to electronic. One band channeled Led Zeppelin to perfection and featured a Japanese guitarist who is one of the best I’ve ever heard or seen anywhere. The dancers were amazing, ranging from traditional to modern and thoroughly professional.
No festival of this kind would be complete without horticultural exhibits. The Vancouver Buddhist Temple, immediately adjacent to the park, hosted bonsai clinics and ikebana demonstrations. The Japanese art of flower arranging may be esoteric to many, but it is an art form of exquisite beauty and deceptive simplicity.
This is perhaps the place to explain that my headline for this post is my feeble attempt at a multi-lingual pun. Japanese festivals are usually centered on a ceremony called Omikashi, which features an intricate gilded portable shrine. It’s mounted on heavy timbers and transported throughout the grounds by a hardworking group of true believers who rock the heavy shrine from side to side with a lot of evocative sound effects. A couple of lovely young ladies are stationed on top of this edifice and urge the carriers on with loud cheers.
Food. There are no words to describe the culinary delights available at this festival. Most of them involve standing in long lines because everyone who comes to this festival wants to sample everything. It’s worth the wait and it helps offset the calories obtained. From yakitori to okonomiyaki to kakigori, it’s a veritable feast. The only thing that proved too daunting to my appetite was Spam sushi. Even Monty Python would probably pass that up.
I should make it clear that the reason that I am so enamored of Japanese culture is because of a lovely lady named Reiko who has shared her joie de vivre with me for 12 wonderful years. Kampei!
Photo credit - Christopher Key
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