Events Archive

National Cherry Blossom Festival 2010

The National Cherry Blossom Festival’s street festival has been organized each spring time as one of the annual featured events in Washington D.C. On April 10th, the ISF participated in the Sakura Matsuri with a booth providing visitors with information about Shinto. The cherry trees in DC grew from 3,000 young plants which were sent by Governor of Tokyo, Yukio Ozaki as a prayer for friendship with the US in 1912. This gesture of friendship truly has become a traditional event for the spring season.

At the ISF booth, we set up a Shinto altar, Torii gates, ring and offering box. Therefore, many visitors made a long queue to pray to our temporary Shinto shrine. We feel we are contributing to the prosperity of introducing Shinto because some American visitors kindly greeted us such as “I visited to your booth last year, too.” and “I am looking forward to visiting your booth next year.”

Furthermore, we were invited for a performance on the main stage of the Street Festival this year. Rev. Nakanishi served the purification ritual by reciting a Purification Prayer and Ms. Hayashibara then preformed Urayasu no Mai, a popular shrine maiden dance conducted by Ms. Shintaku as a Emcee. Then we received generous applause at the end of our presentation.

This is our sixth year participating in this event. We are engaged in continuing this effort in order to promote a better understanding on the part of Americans of the Japanese indigenous religion, Shinto.

National Cherry Blossom Festival
2009 photos   Photo: Flikr by cliff1066