In any other year, the parking lot between the Tri-State/Denver Buddhist Temple and the Pacific Mercantile Company on Lawrence Street would have been filled with music and festival-goers this Saturday.
People dressed in an array of brightly colored, traditional Japanese clothes would have danced, sang and celebrated while paper lanterns fluttered above in the summer breeze. The taiko drums — loud, deep and so percussive that listeners can feel the sound as much as they hear it — would have rumbled on through the night.
On Aug. 8, Denver’s Japanese-American community had hoped to hold its Bon Odori Festival (simply called “Obon”). But as the coronavirus pandemic continues to rage across the country, this year’s festival — like many other events through the nation — will have to take place virtually.
Courtney Ozaki, secretary of the TSDBT board and a driving force in creating the virtual festival, said the tradition of Obon is one worth continuing even though the community can’t physically gather to celebrate.
“I think it’s important to — despite our sort of tumultuous environment that we’re living in — remember that we’re all connected,” she said. “And that this is a way that we can find that commonality in a meaningful way through dancing and joy and the remembrance of our loved ones.”
Obon originated as a festival in the Buddhist tradition in Japan and came to America with the first Japanese immigrants in the early 1900s. TSDBT senior minister Diana Thompson said it is a celebration to honor one’s ancestors and incorporates some of the religion’s core values of interdependence and impermanence. It’s a festival that is celebrated across the country and around the world.
“It’s kind of a way to remember, but … in more of a joyful way, which is why we do the Odori dancing,” she said.
Thompson said this year has been particularly difficult on members who are marking hatsu-bon, the first Bon Odori festival since the death of a loved one. Normally, the temple holds a service specifically for those families before the festival, but this year, that too will have to be virtual.
Despite its religious roots, for many, Obon has become one of the few times every year for the Japanese-American community in Denver to come together.
“It’s an opportunity to be with the other members of the sangha (congregation),” Chad Nitta, president of the TSDBT board of directors, told The Denver Post last month.
Though Obon was held in Denver before World War II, the incarceration of Japanese-Americans became a unifying event for the community in Colorado. In 1944, the first year those incarcerated were allowed to leave camp, Denver was the second-largest resettlement city in the country after Chicago, according to the Densho Encyclopedia. By 1950, the Japanese population here was eight times larger than its pre-war numbers.
With such a diverse group of Japanese-Americans coming to the city looking to build new lives, cultural events like Obon became key to the creation of a new community.
“It’s something that you can always jump in and be a part of regardless of where you come from,” Ozaki, who is from Denver and grew up with the festival, said. “It’s a way that people can connect with one another through a shared investment or value in the holiday.”
The pandemic already has cost the Japanese-American community one other major event: Sakura Matsuri. Also known as the Cherry Blossom Festival, Nitta compared the Sakura Matsuri and Obon to being like Christmas and Easter for the Japanese-American community in Denver. He said those are the two times a year that everyone shows up — even the people who aren’t particularly religious.
So, on Aug. 8, instead of gathering in person, the temple will try to duplicate that feeling through a computer screen. A live-stream will be posted on the TSDBT YouTube channel that will show various community members dancing or playing the taiko drums so anyone who is interested can join in on virtual Obon, something Ozaki thinks is needed now more than ever.
“Our environment is causing a lot of stressors on our lives,” she said. “We feel disconnected and we feel kind of helpless. (Obon) is something that we can rely on, that can help us feel that we know what we’re connected through.”
