Dancing for joy and friendship
Satiman Jamin
2009/10/29
At a car park, people from a land far away were dancing and making merry. Satiman Jamin marvels at how the Japanese Bon Odori Festival has crossed land and cultural borders to become an event that is celebrated by everyone, anywhere
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| Trained in the basic moves of the Bon Odori by their Japanese employee, these Malaysian women are now full-fledged fans of the culture. |
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| It wasn’t just kimono-clad women that were on parade. Super heroes, an integral part of Japanese culture, were also out in force. |
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| At the heart of the dances is the ‘ wadaiko’. Its rhythmic beats, which pick up and slow down in tempo throughout the night, hold the dancers captive. |
THE festive atmosphere at the car park of Giant Hypermarket Southern City in Taman Suria could have been mistaken for that of an Aidilfitri or Deepavali celebration.
The crowd was decidedly Malaysian; people milling around in small groups, teenagers laughing at the antics of friends and a young couple pushing a pram as their baby lay sleeping, unperturbed by the beats of the wadaiko.
It is the sounds of these Japanese drums reverberating rhythmically in the background, and the large number of men and women clad in colourful yutaka, or cotton kimono, that bring the realisation that this wasn't a Malaysian affair at all.
Yet it was still a familiar one. It was Bon Odori, or Bon Dance, a summer festival in Japan with dancing to celebrate happiness and love.
The Bon Odori festival has been celebrated every year by the Japanese community here for quite some time now.
It has not only become a familiar sight to Malaysians, it has been adopted by all who, in true Malaysian spirit, have embraced the idea of yet another celebration that crosses racial and ethnicity lines.
This year, the crowd was even bigger with more than 10,000 people turning up at the festival organised by Japan Club of Johor and Japan Graduates Association of Malaysia.
Japan Club of Johor secretary-general Takeshi Nishikawa said the 10,000 complimentary Japanese fans were all given away barely three hours after the venue was open at 4.30pm.
He said they had prepared that number of fans based on last year's turnout, which was much smaller.
"I am surprised and happy to know that the fan was so well received. It is a step closer towards greater friendship between the local Japanese community and Malaysians," he said.
Nishikawa said this year marked the beginning of the Japan Graduates Association of Malaysia as the co-organiser of the Bon Odori festival, with the objective of attracting more participants.
"With more people attending, we hope our objective of creating a greater level of friendship would be met," he said.
Nishikawa said it was essential for the Japanese working here to foster a good relationship with Malaysians.
"We realise that we have to make the effort to be part of the community and like Malaysians, we want to share our customs and culture, like the Bon Odori," he said.
That looked to have been achieved as Malaysian women in richly patterned yutaka vastly outnumbered the Japanese women at the Bon Odori celebration.
Nishikawa said a Japanese manufacturing company in Senai had trained 80 of its staff in the basic dance moves of Bon Odori.
"The company helped those who were interested in joining the celebration with the dance moves so that they would be confident enough to take part," he said
Shouts of encouragements filled the air when a group of Japanese men took turns to beat rice dough with a huge wooden mallet, an essential step in preparing mochi, a Japanese rice cake.
Malaysian onlookers, busy with their cameras and video-recorders, were persuaded to try their hand at pounding the rice dough, a rare experience out of Japan.
Many of the booths around the festival ground were selling Japanese food, and it was hard to tell whether the yutaka-clad men and women manning them were Malaysians or Japanese.
While the delicious-looking sushi and yaki soba were definitely Japanese, the crew of men, women and children behind the counter looked rather ambiguous.
In an attempt to attract the people, a man shouted "Mari beri mi Jepun!" (Come buy Japanese noodles). It was not so much his guttural and heavily-accented Malay that gave his nationality away as his enunciation of the word "beli" as "beri".
The people cheered at his effort almost at the same time the wadaiko again picked up its rhythm, signalling the start of one more session of dancing.
Malaysians gleefully jumped into the circle of people dancing to its beat, emulating the moves of a smaller circle of dancers on stage.
The Japanese have indeed hit on the perfect formula for making friends. It is a simple enough one that calls for only food, music and dancing
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