Ryukyu Festival celebrates Okinawan culture

Lance Cpl. Aaron Hostutler

Okinawa’s numerous festivals throughout the year offer Americans opportunities to get a close look at Okinawa’s unique culture.

To promote understanding of Okinawa’s rich and diverse culture amongst its students and faculty, Bechtel Elementary School, located at Camp McTureous, hosts its own festival each year: the Ryukyu Festival.

Nearly 1,000 Bechtel students and faculty celebrated the 19th Annual Ryukyu Festival at the school's gym March 20. This year’s celebration featured demonstrations of karate, Taiko drumming and sumo.

The idea for the festival was born in 1990 when Elaine Miyazato, a former Bechtel teacher, with help from other faculty and staff, contacted numerous Okinawan organizations and schools to see if they would come to Bechtel to share their music, martial arts, dance, and art, according to Barbara Lambert, a Ryukyu Festival chairperson for the school.

"The festival provides an opportunity for our students to experience some of those aspects of the Okinawan culture," she said.

Three local groups showcased this year’s festival, which opened with Bechtel's very own Eisa drummers.

They were followed by the Shoheiryu Okinawa Karate Association, led by Sakae Uechi, a 5th-degree black belt, demonstrating several katas, or combinations of positions and movements performed as exercise.

Uechi also demonstrated body hardening, kicking and punching fellow practitioners as they coolly endured the blows. He then invited children from the crowd to take their best shots at shaking his demonstrators.

"Karate is good for health and safety, and it also teaches you patience and effort," said Uechi.

The Gushikawa Kasshin Daiko drumming group took the stage after Uechi's group, filling the gymnasium with a steady rhythmic beat.

Chubu Norin High School’s Sumo Team, the last group of the day, demonstrated sumo warm-up routines and techniques and gave a brief history of sumo wrestling. The wrestlers invited faculty members and students to try their skill in the sumo ring afterward.

The wrestlers put on a comical performance for the students, running away from them, pretending to be scared of them, and even throwing themselves out of the ring so that the children would win.

"The sumo wrestling was lots of fun," said 3rd grader Alex Ferguson. "I got to push one out of the ring even though he let me win."

Tomohisa Kizaki, coach of the sumo team, said that his team has been participating in Bechtel’s
cultural celebration for 15 years. “It’s a great opportunity for my students to perform in front of a large audience like this,” said Kizaki. “They enjoy interacting with Americans, which makes them realize the importance of cultural exchanges.”

Mina Ashimine, Bechtel culture teacher, said that everyone at the school looks forward to the festival each year, which has now become a school tradition.

“The entire school gets involved in keeping the tradition alive,” said Ashimine. “We make original T-shirts and sell them to cover the costs of the festival, such as transportation for the festival’s guest performers.”

Ashimine said the children learned in one day what it would take teachers days or weeks to teach in the classroom. “Feeling the tradition through live performances like we saw today is really important for the children. Their memories of it last forever.”