Though she didn’t celebrate Bunka no Hi herself, when she lived in Japan, Arisa Nakamura now celebrates the modern holiday alongside the community and her fellow Japanese Cultural and Community Center staff and volunteers.
This year marked the organization’s 14th annual celebration of Bunka no Hi, which Nakamura said was originally a celebration of the Emperor Meiji’s birthday, changing in 1948 to commemorate the post-WWII Japanese constitution. While it’s still a national holiday in Japan, it’s now about celebrating and sharing Japanese culture and art, she said.
Ignoring the chilly evening air nipping about them, hundreds of laughing people thronged through Roberto Maestas Plaza at El Centro de la Raza in Seattle, Washington, for the organization’s 15th annual Día de Muertos celebration on Nov. 1. Some wore extravagant, traditional Mexican outfits trimmed with lace, faces painted and decorated to look like bejeweled skulls. Others tucked up in puffy jackets eagerly waited in line for pan de muerto, or Mexican bread of the dead, and a steaming cup of hot chocolate.
NW Black Pride kicked off last night with Black D*ck Matters, written by Kathya Alexander (co-writer of Black to My Roots: African American Tales from Head and the Heart) and directed and produced by Tyrone Brown. The multimedia experimental experience premiered at Gay City in front of a full house, and much like Black Pride itself, the play was provocative. The piece both asks and answers a question aimed toward Black men: How does “it” feel? The answers, revealed throughout the play, unmask the tenderness of Black pain alongside Black pleasure.
Under the warm, yellow lights of Kobo in the Chinatown-International District’s Japantown, Mako Willet readied her sanshin, an Okinawan instrument similar to a lute, to play another song, supposed to warn fishermen about stepping on sharp conch shells.
It’s hard to miss Javoen Byrd as he enters Empire Espresso on Edmunds Street in Columbia City. He sports a cream colored outfit with soft gold balls dangling from the collar, an Aso Yoruba. It’s an outfit I’ve seen him wear several times when tapping his hands on a set of drums in celebration of his African heritage.
The new documentary, Q Ball, is the story of a group of incarcerated men hoping to find redemption through basketball. It screens as part of the Seattle International Film Festival at the Ark Lodge in Columbia City on Friday, May 17 at 6:30 p.m. and at the SIFF Uptown theater in Queen Anne May 18 at noon and May 21 at 3:30 p.m.
The Liberty Bank Building is the first ever black-owned bank west of the Mississippi. It’s now the heart of South Seattle’s revitalization and a beacon for the community. It’s in this building that Kristi Brown will make her first run at owning a brick and mortar.
