Salt Lake Buddhist Temple to host 90th annual Obon festival in Japantown

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The Salt Lake Buddhist Temple will host the 90th Obon festival on Saturday.
• Festival chair Trey Imamura expressed gratitude for the legacy of Utah's Japanese American community.
• The event features traditional dances, lanterns honoring ancestors and a taiko drum performance.

SALT LAKE CITY — The Salt Lake Buddhist Temple is gearing up for a celebration of an event it has hosted since the late 1930s.

The 90th annual Obon festival, an event that encourages attendees to honor and remember their ancestors, will take place on Saturday in downtown Salt Lake City.

"Reaching 90 years of Obon in Salt Lake is a humbling milestone," said Trey Imamura, festival chair and a temple board member. "I feel a deep sense of gratitude for the entire Japanese American community in Utah that has carried our collective legacy forward."

The Salt Lake Buddhist Temple was established in 1912 in Salt Lake City's Japantown, an area of the city that spanned multiple blocks and included restaurants, markets, the Japanese Church of Christ and a Japanese language school. The first Obon festival was held 24 years later in 1936.

Over time, historic Japantown gradually contracted, anchored on either side by the Japanese Church of Christ and the Salt Lake Buddhist Temple. Most of the area was eventually demolished to make way for the Salt Palace Convention Center built between the 1960s and 1990s, leaving only a single block along 100 South in Salt Lake City.

Imamura said that he felt very welcome in Salt Lake City as a Buddhist, with representatives and members of different religious organizations supporting and caring for him and his community.

"There's this thread of just different cultures downtown, whether you're Buddhist, Christian, Hindu ... everybody participates," he said.

Origins of the Obon festival

According to the San Fernando Valley Japanese Language Institute, the Obon festival has roots that trace back to the story of Mokuren, a disciple of the Buddha. Mokuren's mother was trapped in the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, unable to rest in peace. The Buddha told Mokuren he would need to make offerings on the 15th day of the seventh month to Buddhist monks, following which his mother would be freed from her suffering. After making the offerings and freeing his mother to travel to the Pure Land, Mokuren danced with joy and gratitude.

Imamura said the Obon festival features dancing inspired by Mokuren's dance of gratitude. The choreographed steps mimic the daily labors of the dancer's ancestors, including harvesting crops, coal mining and casting fishing nets.

While the festival originated in Japan, those living in Utah evolved the festival to celebrate Japanese Americans and the distinct history and resilience of American immigrants.

"We are very proud to be a part of the community in celebrating this important event," said Salt Lake Buddhist Temple President Troy Watanabe. "Having our celebration in historic Japantown highlights its importance to Salt Lake City. This is where our parents and grandparents held the festival. Seeing this tradition reach 90 years fills me with immense pride, and we want to carry on that tradition to honor them."

90 years of celebration

The Rev. Jerry Kyosei Hirano, who attended the Salt Lake Buddhist Temple when he was a child, has now led the temple through more than a third of the festival's entire 90-year history.

"I have long believed that every genuine religious experience should be accompanied by at least one moment of profound joy," Hirano said. "While we remember those who have passed before us, we do not gather merely to mourn. We gather to awaken to the immeasurable gifts we have received through them."

As part of the celebration, lanterns are lit above the dancers, each of which bears the names of deceased ancestors and loved ones being remembered.

"Every lantern tells a story," Hirano said. "Every name represents a gift. Every dance becomes an expression of the joy and gratitude that connect us across generations."

The dancers are scheduled to begin their celebration at 8 p.m., but the festivities begin as early as 3 p.m. All are welcome to attend the event, which includes free admission to the festival, tours of the Salt Lake Buddhist Temple, food for sale and access to Lumbini's Garden, a dry goods store for Japanese items, books and other novelties.

In order to beat the heat, cool water misters and sunshades have been added behind the Buddhist temple and in the west wing. A scout troop affiliated with the temple is scheduled to be on call, ready to top off containers of cold water and hand out cooling towels to keep attendees hydrated. Emergency medical services will be on site ready to assist should the heat overcome any attendees.

At 7 p.m., a taiko drum performance will occur. For the dancing later, participants are scheduled to perform 16 traditional Japanese dances, including "Bon Odori No Uta," a classic Japanese folk song to welcome the spirits of those who have passed.

Sandy Iwasaki, the temple's head dance instructor, said she was grateful to follow in her mother's footsteps and continue to celebrate. "My mother, Maxine Furubayashi, was an Obon instructor and adviser in the Salt Lake Buddhist Temple from 1947 until her passing. Obon time for me is a time to remember my mother and all of my other family members and friends that have come before me."

Imamura emphasized that all are welcome to come celebrate with the Buddhist Temple, likening the festival to a "Japanese Memorial Day."

"I'm grateful to everybody in the state of Utah. Thank you for continuing this tradition for 90 years," Imamura said. "Thank you to our ancestors for giving us the gift of our Japanese culture and allowing us to share that 90 years later."

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The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.

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