The Seattle Cherry Blossom & Japanese Cultural Festival (SCBJCF) took place this past weekend showcasing beautiful art, vendor booths, and even sumo wrestling. While Seattle only has a fractional Japanese population, people from all over King County and beyond joined the festivities to welcome the spring. 

The festival was able to bring hundreds of people to come celebrate the long friendship between the people of Japan and Washington state. The SCBJCF committee, which is a non-profit organization composed of volunteers and overseen by an advisory group, presented culturally educational programs, arts, technologies, the rich heritage of Japan, and celebrated the beautiful sakura cherry tree.

The Seattle Cherry Blossom & Japanese Cultural Festival originally started in May, 1976, by Mayor Wes Uhlman and community leaders, after Japan’s former prime minister Takeo Miki,  gifted Seattle one thousand cherry trees in honor of America’s bicentennial and the long friendship between the people of Japan and Washington state.

Throughout this three day festival there were multiple activities you could participate in that were spread out into three different buildings, the inside of the Fisher Pavilion, the Armory on the second and third floors, and one event in the Exhibition Hall.

For the entire festival you could try on a kimono brought from the Seattle-Kobe Sister City Assn. While trying them on you could have a volunteer at the station help you put it on and even take photos for you.

Rain City Sumo held a sumo wrestling competition in the Exhibition Hall from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The competition was split up into multiple brackets based on weight. The brackets started with Ultra Lightweight, Lightweight, Middleweight, Light Heavy, Heavyweight, Super Heavyweight, and Open Weight; the brackets were also separated by gender.

The top three winners of each bracket were given medals based on their final points added up at an award ceremony after the deciding match to congratulate the wrestlers. 

Michael Fields, a sumo wrestler since 2019 placed first in the Light Heavy bracket and talked about his experience in the competition. He said, “I can honestly say that I actually felt pretty good, and aside from dealing with the other guy’s height and a lot of them are strong, you know, as light heavyweight just keeps getting stronger and stronger every year.”

At another part of the festival, the Kobe sisters also had wagasa, a traditional Japanese umbrella, that can be used in traditional Japanese performances or ceremonies. They also had two types of fans, uchiwa which is a slightly bigger fan and is rather stiff and flat. While the sensu is a type of fan that could be folded up and carried easily. 

Inside the Fisher building they had multiple sections with booths that revolved around the prefectures in Japan. They also had objects that were brought from their prefecture. 

The Fukushima prefecture was run by the Fukushima club in Seattle. Their booth had multiple trinkets and even some snacks you could try like peach juice that was brought back from Japan as the club had gone to Fukushima. 

Another booth in the Fisher building was the Miyazaki prefecture. The representatives had a raffle where you could win wooden flowers. They also had multiple magazines from Japan and talked about some of the fun things you could do and some fun facts about Miyazaki.

The festival also had fun activities like making your own Japanese kite, sake testing, Shintokan dojo showcasing their teachings, a ceremony for students who participated in a speech contest, and they even had a songwriter, Tomo Nakayama, to talk about their experience in writing their songs.

On an outside stage they had multiple performances varying from martial arts to song performances, as they had a few bands come on stage like the Cherry Dragon and Ichi Bichi – which is a pink punk rock band that is all about high contrast.

“Seattle Cherry Blossom & Japanese Cultural Festival has a long-distinguished relationship to the Festál series, being the first ethnic festival held annually at the Center,” said Heidi Jackson, Seattle Center Managing Artistic Director of Cultural Programs. “Cherry blossoms are a renewal of spring and life. Everyone is invited to enjoy this renewal together at this entertaining, family-friendly cultural celebration.”