Overview:
The 51st Cherry Blossom Festival honors Japanese culture with food and events, including traditional dance performances by DBT Minyo Kai.
Every week at the Denver Buddhist Temple, members of DBT Minyo Kai gather to practice traditional Japanese folk dancing—an art form they’ve helped keep alive in Colorado for more than half a century. Founded in the 1960s by first-generation Japanese women, the group has long used dance as a way to preserve culture and connect across generations.
“They would dance at different places like at universities, festivals or nursing homes,” said Donna Noguchi, a Japanese American who is a co-president of DBT Minyo Kai along with Karen Matsuhima. “And if there were older [Japanese] generations living in the nursing homes, they would entertain them and remind them of that Japanese culture they miss.”
That spirit of celebration and remembrance continues this weekend as DBT Minyo Kai performs at the 51st annual Cherry Blossom Festival in downtown Denver’s Sakura Square. Organized by the Tri-State Denver Buddhist Temple and the Sakura Foundation, the free, two-day event features live entertainment, Japanese food, sake tastings, crafts and cultural demonstrations that all honor the resilience of the Japanese American community.
“Being able to share our Japanese culture is so important and rewarding,” said Stacy Shigaya, a third-generation Japanese American who has worked with the Sakura Foundation since 2014 and partnered with the Cherry Blossom Festival since 2016. “It brings joy to others, helps them understand our community better, and hopefully inspires them to become more involved in the Japanese American community and/or inspires them to learn more/visit Japan.”
Festival attendees will be able to encounter many different types of Japanese businesses, foods and entertainment taking place again this year at the 51st Cherry Blossom Festival and it can be hard to figure out where to start when taking in the free admission event. However, one sure bet is a traditional dance performance by DBT Minyo Kai, which has been dancing in the festival since its beginning.
“I’m excited because there are two dances that we had never performed before, and one of them [dances] is quite challenging and we had to have extra practices,” Noguchi said. “I am excited, anxious and nervous because if we do this dance right, it’s going to be really nice.”
Co-presidents Matsushima and Noguchi are of Japanese descent and feel proud to perform traditional dances that date back to the 10th century. The dance troupe’s name is roughly translated as “folk song” (minyo) and “group” (kai). Minyo Kai performers wear traditional Kimonos when dancing to give it more authenticity and use props or certain movements for each specific song they dance to.
“We try to learn dances from all parts of Japan, the dances we do are specific to different regions and every region is very proud of their set of dances,” Matsushima said. “Dancing for me is a chance to regain a part of the culture that had to be hidden because of racism rooted from WWII. This is an opportunity to reclaim that part of our culture to share and to have it appreciated, and that’s what makes me enjoy performing so much.”
While Noguchi was born and raised in Denver, her mother was born and raised in Hiroshima, and her father, a California native, moved to Hiroshima as a child and was raised there until he returned to the States in 1948. Matsushima was born in Pittsburgh, California, where both of her parents were born and raised, but her mother was briefly raised in Hiroshima before returning to the United States as World War II loomed.
“I was not raised around Japanese culture, I would say as much as Donna. We were kind of on the outskirts of any community,” said Matsushima. “It’s my parents’ history of being incarcerated during World War II that kind of led to them wanting us to just be American. So they did not teach us how to speak Japanese.”
However, even if the two co-presidents of DBT Minyo Kai weren’t heavily submerged into the Japanese culture growing up, the two still found ways to connect with their community and ancestors through Minyo dancing.
“I joined [DBT] in 1983 after I graduated from college,” Noguchi said. “I danced with my mother until she passed away in 2020.”
“I joined around 1989; I was older,” Matsushima adds. “I always saw my cousins dancing when we went to Los Angeles and it was always something I wanted to do.”
The two describe how keeping up with the traditional ways of dancing has become more difficult due to not having the guidance from the original dancers of the group, because some of them have stopped dancing.
“They [original dancers] have had the privilege to learn a lot when they were in Japan, where we have learned it from them, and what we have learned here in the states,” Matsushima said. “What really helped is that somewhere along the way, we started to record the dances during practice because we realized that they [original dancers] weren’t going to be able to teach us forever. So we refer back to those recordings to help us.”
“We have no formal instructor now, so everything we do is off of the videos,” Noguchi adds. “We go off of what we’re told by the ladies from before, look at the videos and we try the best we can to do those dances correctly.”
With the videos to guide them and weekly practice, the group has developed the ability to dance to these traditional songs in order to keep this tradition alive in their community and pass it down to future generations.
“I would love to see it continue on,” Matsushima said. “We want to teach the dances to anybody who wants to come and dance/participate. Minyo is a group that teaches everybody. If that is to continue, we need the younger generation to become more involved.”
DBT Minyo Kai will perform at the festival on the center stage this Sunday, June 22, at 1:05 p.m. Co-presidents Karen Matsushima and Noguchi will lead their 10-person group in traditional dances to folk songs famous from Japan.
The three dances DBT Minyo Kai will perform on stage are Yoheho, Soroban Odori and Oedo Nihonbe. Both Matsushima and Noguchi hope that their performance at the Cherry Blossom Festival will inspire the next generation of dancers to take up the art form.
“I have enjoyed the increased interest in the audiences that want to see us perform.” Said Noguchi. “That’s the part I really enjoy when we perform to people who haven’t seen [us] before and they really enjoy what we’re doing. It’s always fun to have the audience jump in and dance with us as well.”
For more information about the Cherry Blossom Festival, visit its website or call 303-951-4486.
