Huntington Beach Cherry Blossom Festival 2017!

    
   The Huntington Beach Sister City Association hosts the fourth annual Cherry Blossom Festival at Huntington Beach Central Park on Sunday, March 19, 11 am to 5 pm, supporting the Student Ambassador exchange program with Sister City, Anjo, Japan.

   Consulate General of Japan in Los Angeles, Akira Chiba, will help open the Festival—along with City of Huntington Beach officials, the Sister City Association, and a delegation from Anjo—by ceremonially planting this year’s Japanese cherry tree near the Secret Garden in Central Park.  The Cherry Blossom Festival is held at the bandstand behind the Central Park Library adjacent to the grove of cherry trees, many of which are gifts from Anjo, Japan. 

RIGHT: Geese hard at work on the grounds of the Huntington Beach Cherry Blossom Festival in Central Park. Look for the 2002 anniversary stone beneath the cherry trees on the main walkway, which honors the multi-decade friendship with Sister City Anjo, Japan. "Each spring in Japan, cherry blossoms are enjoyed as a symbol of renewed life and vitality." (M. Urashima, March 2017) ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ©

  The 2017 Cherry Blossom Festival features live taiko drum performance, the popular Rayko of Lolita Dark, jazz music from Dojo Jam Band, and Japanese dance and theater—representing traditional and modern Japanese and Japanese American culture.  A wide variety of food vendors will offer a taste of Japan, with local favorite Samurai Burrito, traditional favorites like takoyaki, yakitori, okonomiyaki, mochi, freshly-made udon noodles, Japanese-style hot dogs, and Japanese specialty drinks and tea.

LEFT: A tea bowl, powdered macha (green tea) and whisk used in a traditional tea ceremony. (Source: Consulate General of Japan, San Francisco)

   The centuries-old “Way of Tea”, or chanoyu, and a bonsai demonstration will be special features at this year’s Festival.  Omote Senke (表千家 one of the schools of Japanese tea ceremony established in the 17th century) will be presenting a traditional Japanese Tea Ceremony under a tent near the Secret Garden.

   The Tea Ceremony is a beautifully symbolic tea serving with every detail choreographed in fixed form (kata) as a demonstration of etiquette and to express the bond between the server and the guest.  Close attention is given to the manner in which the macha, or green tea, is whisked, the folded tea cloth, and the way the bowl of tea is served and sipped.

   Omotesenke in Japan explains the tradition they have upheld for over 400 years, "This tradition is not just the inheritance of a form, but is a searching for the right way to be within the context of history. New life is breathed into it as it adapts to each period, so it is a living culture that has been handed down.  Chanoyu is 'a communication of the minds of host and guests through the enjoyment of delicious tea together'."

LEFT: Dolls on exhibit at one of the cultural booths at a prior Huntington Beach Cherry Blossom Festival. (M. Urashima, 2015) ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ©

   Renowned bonsai master Frank Goya---a native Californian who was incarcerated for three years during World War II, due to his Japanese ancestry---will provide a demonstration in the Central Park amphitheater.  In 2003, the Los Angeles Times said of Frank Goya and his bonsai creations (The beauty in bonsai, January 30, 2003), "The trees are fed by gnarled roots that grab the soil like ancient fingers and are harvested from harsh mountain and desert conditions. Much of their beauty is that of resilience, survival, of bending with the wind and living despite estreme climactic conditions. Goya, too, has survived, has bent with the wind."

BELOW RIGHT:  The four-century old bonsai that survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. It is at the U.S. National Arboretum, a gift from Japan, as part of one of the largest collections of bonsai in north America.  The story of the bonsai at the U.S. Arboretum, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYPeNcnyZ6g (Source: Image from U.S. Arboretum; Youtube story from Voice of America)

Considered one of the top bonsai artists in the United States, Frank Goya's speciality of bonsai is known as saikei, a living miniature landscape of tree, rock, and ground cover, such as moss. The word bonsai (盆栽) means "tray planting" and the selection of the container is of equal importance to the plant selection, for a creation that may last centuries.

   A variety of cultural booths will offer information about Japanese culture, crafts, and games for all ages.  Historical information booths will share more about the history and culture of Japanese Americans, who first arrived in California in the 1860s.   

   National Treasure Historic Wintersburg will be at the Festival with an informational booth about our century-old goldfish farm and mission history.  This year, we bring back our popular "goldfish" bean bag toss for the young at heart.   

   Historic Wintersburg also will hand out a healthy "farm" snack: freshly picked, organic carrots courtesy of our supporter Tanaka Farms.    The kids will love these crunchy carrots with the long green leafy tops, as they stroll the Festival grounds!

   Admission to the Cherry Blossom Festival is free, with donation opportunities to support the 35-year international friendship and student exchange program between Huntington Beach and Anjo, Japan.  This year, the Huntington Beach Sister City Association reaches a 35-year milestone, recognizing the relationship initiated with Anjo, Japan, in 1982 and officially incorporated in 1992.  For more information about the Huntington Beach Sister City Cherry Blossom Festival, http://www.hbcbfest.com/

 

All rights reserved.  No part of the Historic Wintersburg blog may be reproduced or duplicated without prior written permission from the author and publisher, M. Adams Urashima.

Sakura: Cherry blossoms and flower viewing season in Huntington Beach Central Park

The annual Huntington Beach Cherry Blossom Festival is Sunday, March 20, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., behind the Central Library at 7111 Talbert Avenue and Goldenwest Street. Free parking is plentiful in the Central Library parking lot. This event celebrates Huntington Beach's Sister City relationship with Anjo, Japan, and supports the student exchange program. (Photo, M. Urashima, 2015) © All rights reserved.

   It took two attempts to bring the first gift of cherry trees to the United States from Japan.  The first shipment of 2,000 trees in 1910 were not healthy enough to plant.  The second shipment of 3,000 trees from Mayor Yukio Ozaki of Tokyo to the city of Washington, D.C. in 1912 were a success!  It is the recognition of that gift that sparked the National Cherry Blossom Festival along the Tidal Basin.

LEFT:  In Japan, the face of the moon is a rabbit mochi-tsuki: rabbits pounding cooked rice in a mortar to make mochi, the confection enjoyed at special holidays and festivals. Dango, or mochi, is often shaped like a rabbit at the time of the fall moon festival and like cherry blossoms during hanami, or "flower viewing" season. (Image, National Diet Library, Japan)

    It was an idea with roots in the late 19th Century, with the writer Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore.  Scidmore was an aberration.  She wrote the first travel book for Alaska and was the first woman to write for National Geographic.  Scidmore wrote about her experiences traveling in Asia and lived in Japan.  She would write about Asia for decades, introducing American readers to the Japanese moon festival and that while Americans saw a "man in the moon," in Japan the image on the moon's face was seen as "rabbits making mochi."  

   While she wrote about cultural traditions and flower festivals--such as the festival in Japan for the asagao, or morning glory--Scidmore also was acknowledged as an insightful observer of the social and political environment in Asia, publishing works like Java: The Garden of the East in 1897, and China: The Long Lived Empire in 1900.

RIGHT: An illustration from Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore's 1891 book, Jinrikisha days in Japan (New York, Harper & Brothers). Scidmore writes, "the cloud-burst of cherry blossoms decks the Empire in wreaths of white and pink, and fills the people with joy."  Scidmore continues to explain to her readers that "the gradual unfolding of sakura, the cherry blossoms, is of great concern, the native newspapers daily printing advance despatches from the trees..the pinkish light from their fair canopy dazzles and dizzies the beholder." Today in Japan, the "cherry blossom front" is reported on the nightly news as the blossoms move south to north through the country.

LEFT: Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore, described as a writer of "sparkling travel sketches" by the Minneapolis Journal, March 16, 1901.  She was the first to advocate for the planting of cherry trees in Washington D.C.   Washington Post writer Michael Ruane wrote in 2012 about Scidmore's appearance at a Capitol society ball in the winter of 1894: "She wore a gown of green under a black silk robe embroidered with gold and silver Japanese characters. And when the young woman walked into the Dupont Circle mansion that night, she turned every head...She was 37, an author, journalist, traveler and collector of the lore and artifacts of far-off lands." (Photo, Wisonsin Historical Society)

   The U.S. National Park Service (NPS) credits Scidmore as the first to advocate for cherry trees in 1885. 

"Upon returning to Washington from her first visit to Japan", reports the NPS, Scidmore"approached the U.S. Army Superintendent of the Office of Public Buildings and Grounds, with the proposal that cherry trees be planted one day along the reclaimed Potomac waterfront. Her request fell on deaf ears. Over the next twenty-four years, Mrs. Scidmore approached every new superintendent, but her idea met with no success."

RIGHT: Cherry trees in bloom in Akasaka, an area of Tokyo, in the 1890s. (Photograph, The New York Public Library. ID 109995. Photography Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs.)

    

   In 1909, Scidmore made the request of the wife of President William Howard Taft, first lady Hellen Herron Taft, suggesting she would fund raise to buy the cherry trees and donate them to the Capitol.  The NPS explains that the First Lady had lived in Japan and was familiar with the sight of the cherry trees in bloom. 

   Hellen Herron Taft responded to Scidmore in two days, writing, "Thank you very much for your suggestion about the cherry trees. I have taken the matter up and am promised the trees, but I thought perhaps it would be best to make an avenue of them, extending down to the turn in the road, as the other part is still too rough to do any planting. Of course, they would not reflect in the water, but the effect would be very lovely of the long avenue. Let me know what you think about this."
 

LEFT: An image from the Huntington Beach Cherry Blossom Festival in 2014. (Original photo by Gregory Robertson) © All rights reserved.

   The Washington Post continues the history, explaining that the day after Scidmore received the letter from the First Lady, "she told two Japanese acquaintances who were in Washington on business: Jokichi Takamine, the New York chemist, and Kokichi Mizumo, Japan's consul general in New York.  The two men immediately suggested a donation of 2,000 trees from Japan, specifically from its capital, Tokyo, as a gesture of friendship"and asked Scidmore to find out if the First Lady would find the gift acceptable.  She did.

RIGHT: A hummingbird winging through the cherry blossoms in Huntington Beach Central Park. (Photo, Gregory Robertson, 2015) © All rights reserved. 

   With First Lady Helen Taft's support, things moved quickly.  Although the first batch of cherry trees could not be planted, the second love letter from Japan arrived just in time for Valentine's Day, February 14, 1912.  Over three thousand trees were shipped from Yokohama to Seattle, then in insulated freight cars to Washington D.C.  And, on March 27, 1912, Helen Herron Taft and the Viscountess Chinda, wife of the Japanese Ambassador, planted two Yoshino cherry trees on the northern bank of the Tidal Basin.

   That year, the Washington Star reported a "Washington woman who has been decorated is Miss Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore, whose home is at 1837 M Street northwest, and who in 1908 was given the cross of the Order of the Eastern Rising Sun by the Emperor of Japan in recognition of her writings on Japan." (Editor's note: Scidmore's home appears to be standing at the address reported in 1912, a stately, restored brick Victorian, now living a new life as a restaurant.)

LEFT: Taiko drum performance at the 2015 Huntington Beach Cherry Blossom Festival.  There will be taiko drum, classical Japanese dance, live music from Japanese musical groups, cultural arts and crafts, and a wide variety of Japanese and Japanese-influenced foods to try at this year's Festival.  Admission and parking in the Huntington Beach Central Library parking lot are free. (Photo, M. Urashima, 2015) © All rights reserved.

   The National Cherry Blossom Festival reports that several years later in 1915, the United States reciprocated with a gift of flowering dogwood trees to the people of Japan.  In 2012--a century after the planting of Japan's gift of cherry trees in Washington D.C.--the United States sent 3,000 flowering dogwood trees to Japan as an anniversary gift.  The dogwood trees were planted in Tohoku region of northern Japan and in Yoyogi Park of Tokyo.

   To preserve the original genetic lineage of the first cherry trees, the NPS reports that "approximately 120 propagates from the surviving 1912 trees around the Tidal Basin were collected by NPS horticulturists and sent back to Japan (in 2011) to the Japan Cherry Blossom Association...Through this cycle of giving, the cherry trees continue to fulfill their role as a symbol and as an agent of friendship."

LEFT: An early 20th Century selfie. By 1921, the cherry trees in the Tidal Basin had become Washington D.C. celebrities, celebrated and photographed. (Image, Washington Evening Star, April 3, 1921)

   This year in Huntington Beach, we will again plant new cherry trees in Central Park--near the lakeside Secret Garden--with the Consulate General of Japan in Los Angeles and delegates from our Sister City Anjo, Japan.  This Southern California-central Japan friendship began in 1982 and is working toward its own centennial event.  The Cherry Blossom Festival of 2082 will be one for the books!

RIGHT: Historic Wintersburg, designated a National Treasure in October 2015, will have a booth again at this year's Cherry Blossom Festival in Huntington Beach Central Park on March 20. Author Mary Adams Urashima will be signing her book, Historic Wintersburg in Huntington Beach, about the history of Wintersburg Village and Orange County's Japanese American pioneers, the Furuta Gold Fish Farm and the Wintersburg Mission. In addition to historical information, there also will be an activity and treat for little cherry blossom visitors! (Original photo by Barbara Haynes, 2015) © All rights reserved.


LEARN MORE:

It's Hanami Time! at Surf City Family can be found at http://www.surfcityfamily.com/2016/02/29/hanami-time-huntington-beach-cherry-blossom-festival-march-20/

The Huntington Beach Sister City organization website for the annual Cherry Blossom Festival--with information on performances and vendors--is at http://www.hbjapanesefestival.com/


Read the History of the Cherry Trees from the U.S. National Park Service at http://www.nps.gov/subjects/cherryblossom/history-of-the-cherry-trees.htm

Read the full feature by Mike Ruane, Cherry Blossom's Champion, Eliza Scidmore, Led a Life of Adventure, The Washington Post, March 13, 2012, at https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/cherry-blossoms-champion-eliza-scidmore-led-a-life-of-adventure/2012/02/22/gIQAAzHEAS_story.html

Author Andrea Zimmerman has written a book about Eliza Scidmore, Eliza's Cherry Trees, with more information about Eliza's life, travels and writing, and teacher resources at http://www.elizascidmore.com/home

All rights reserved.  No part of the Historic Wintersburg blog may be reproduced or duplicated without prior written permission from the author and publisher, M. Adams Urashima.