Obon Festival
We rented a car and were ready to go. Luckily, the Sacramento Buddhist Church happened to be having their annual Obon festival that day.
We were surprised at how many Asian Americans were in attendance. Sacramento is a bit removed from the Bay Area, a couple hours
north and east, yet we discovered a thriving community.
For me, the Obon is about maintaining the legacy of the Buddhist Churches of America, which is the largest and oldest Japanese American
social organization in the country. It’s also an organization that provided a community center for my grandmother and great grandparents in
Los Angeles during the 1930s.
The Buddhist Churches of America’s San Francisco chapter provided a community outlet for my father during the post-World War II ‘50s,
and then my father and grandmother became members of the Palo Alto chapter in the 1970s.
Now, seeing how much the Obon means to the children of my aging Dharma School peers, I realize the importance of preserving
community, legacy, culture and history. These children are of mixed heritage, and bring promise and sustenance to the future of the
organization.
By Kenny Tanemura
This summer I had the good fortune of going to two Obon Festivals in northern California. Traditionally,
Obon is a time of prayer for the ancestors, of sharing good news with them and welcoming them back.
While this celebration lasts from August 13-16 in Japan, Japanese Americans have spread it out over
the entire summer, so that people can participate in the celebration at various locations on the West
Coast.
The first Obon I went to was at the Palo Alto Buddhist Temple, where I grew up going to Dharma School
as a child, and then participating in the Junior Young Buddhist Association in high-school. My father is
still in charge of the corn, so my sister and I helped him this summer in the corn booth.
When I was growing up around the Palo Alto Buddhist Temple in the 1970s and ‘80s, the community
surrounding the Temple was a largely homogenous group. There was beauty in being part of a group that
was mostly Japanese Americans, because our communities are so dispersed in the U.S. But it’s also
heartening to see, now, how much of a pan-Asian American event the Obon has become in more recent
years.
A few weeks later, I, my sister, and her husband (an engineer from Portugal), went on a trek to discover
the Japanese American community in Sacramento. Our plans weren’t very well sketched out, because
the plans consisted of mapquesting the Sacramento Buddhist Church in Sacramento and driving to that
neighborhood.
This summer I had the good fortune of going to two Obon Festivals in northern California. Traditionally,
Obon is a time of prayer for the ancestors, of sharing good news with them and welcoming them back.
While this celebration lasts from August 13-16 in Japan, Japanese Americans have spread it out over
the entire summer, so that people can participate in the celebration at various locations on the West
Coast.
The first Obon I went to was at the Palo Alto Buddhist Temple, where I grew up going to Dharma School
as a child, and then participating in the Junior Young Buddhist Association in high-school. My father is
still in charge of the corn, so my sister and I helped him this summer in the corn booth.
When I was growing up around the Palo Alto Buddhist Temple in the 1970s and ‘80s, the community
surrounding the Temple was a largely homogenous group. There was beauty in being part of a group that
was mostly Japanese Americans, because our communities are so dispersed in the U.S. But it’s also
heartening to see, now, how much of a pan-Asian American event the Obon has become in more recent
years.
A few weeks later, I, my sister, and her husband (an engineer from Portugal), went on a trek to discover
the Japanese American community in Sacramento. Our plans weren’t very well sketched out, because
the plans consisted of mapquesting the Sacramento Buddhist Church in Sacramento and driving to that
neighborhood.
Kenny Tanemura
