This year’s Bon Odori festival in Olympia could be the last

On Saturday, Olympia’s Japanese-American community celebrates Bon Odori, a secular version of a Buddhist festival honoring the ancestors through dance and music.

It’s the 33rd year that the joyful remembrance has been a tradition in Olympia — and it might be the final one, said organizer Reiko Callner of the Japanese American Citizens League.

“This is the last one we know we’re having,” Callner told The Olympian. “It’s really come down to three families and a couple of individuals doing a ton of work every year and just getting tired out.”

The centerpiece of the event, also known as Obon, are the traditional Japanese folk dances, which are led by dancers garbed in colorful yukata and in which all are encouraged to participate.

“It’s nice to see dancers who are graceful and skilled, but it’s also nice to see people who don’t normally dance getting up to have that experience,” Callner said. “They’re smiling partly because they feel silly and partly because they feel liberated.

“It’s part of the joy of the occasion.”

“The guiding purpose of Bon Odori is to set aside the ego through unselfconscious dancing,” according to an article on sfjapantown.org. “Participation is customarily diverse — with young and old, formally trained and informally trained dancers, Japanese Americans and non-Japanese Americans.”

Callner said, “The majority of people get up and dance. I also attend the Tacoma Obon, and I have been to the ones in White River and Seattle, and I think we get more general members of the community joining us here. It’s very nice, and it’s very Olympia.”

The Olympia event, which draws about 300 people each year, also features Japanese food and taiko drumming. It ends with a lantern walk to honor the ancestors.

Some of the details of the festival have been simplified a bit this year, Callner said, but more changes are needed to make the event sustainable.

The league is hoping to attract more volunteers and has mounted a fundraising campaign with a goal of $4,000 — the sum that the volunteer-run food concessions raise each year.

That would leave volunteers with less to do, though more help would still be needed.

“The final decision on whether this is the last year won’t be made this week,” Callner said. “We’ll see how it goes and what it takes.”