Over 50 years ago, the Denver Urban Renewal Authority told the Tri-State Denver Buddhist Temple — at the corner of Lawrence and 20th streets — that they needed to either buy the rest of their block or move. 

Members of the temple decided to take a risk and purchase the area, now known as Sakura Square, creating a multigenerational and multi-cultural community with various Japanese American goods and services.

A year after the purchase in 1974, the temple held the city’s first Cherry Blossom Festival. 

This Saturday and Sunday, the annual Cherry Blossom Festival marked its 50th anniversary at Sakura Square, celebrating Japanese culture with goods, performances and food.

During the two-day event, around 60 vendors showed off Japanese goods and information about local non-profits. Members of the Tri-State Denver Buddhist Temple cooked traditional food and performers played traditional Japanese instruments and danced on the nearby stage. 

“The whole impetus of the festival is to celebrate our Japanese and Japanese American culture and also, for both organizations, it’s the largest fundraiser for us every year,” Stacey Shigaya, executive director of the Sakura Foundation, said of the event — organized by the Sakura Foundation and Tri-State Denver Buddhist Temple.

Japanese history in Colorado

After the loan for the square was paid off in 2014, the Sakura Foundation non-profit was started to celebrate Japanese culture and provide information and events to the small-but-strong community, Shigaya noted.

“The Asian community in Colorado is about 5% of the population. The Japanese community is a much smaller subset of that. We are one of the smaller Asian communities in Colorado,” she said.

But, Shigaya added that Colorado’s Japanese American community remains tight-knit due to history and the state’s former governor, Ralph Carr. 

On February 16, 1942, during the midst of World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt enacted Executive Order 9066 — authorizing the forced removal of people seen as a national security threat from the West Coast to “relocation centers.”

Around 120,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated. One of the camps, Camp Amache, was built in southeast Colorado in Granada. 

Governor Carr openly opposed the incarceration camps. 

“Once the camps closed, he invited Japanese people to come to Colorado and start their new lives,” Shigaya said. “By doing that, he risked his political future and was never elected to a public office again. That’s why we have a relatively substantial population here compared to places in the middle of the country.”

A celebration

The Cherry Blossom Festival, which initially started in Washington D.C. to celebrate the relationship built between the two countries when Japanese cherry trees were gifted to the United States in 1912, now celebrates the overall culture of Japan and Japanese Americans.

The Denver festival is no different.

“My mother and I would get a lot of stares,” Candice Tsutsui, owner of C Rei Jewelry and co-owner of the Colorado Budokan karate school, said of her time growing up in the United States during World War II.

“I’ve been called a ‘Jap’ and I’ve been told to go back where I came from. I think education is the key. The more people understand about the other cultures, the more they will understand we’re more alike than different,” she said.

To Tsutsui, the festival is an opportunity for others to learn about her culture.

“It’s wonderful,” she said of the event. “The more people that know, the better and the more accepting and tolerate than can be.”

One booth over, Tsutsui’s daughter, Akemi Tsutsui-Kunitake, was selling her fude brush ink illustrations, all made with a traditional Japanese brush.

Tsutsui-Kunitake grew up helping her mother at her jewelry booth. Now, she has her own.

“It’s been an interesting progression in terms of how my career has evolved and really having that cultural connection, too,” she said. “It means a lot to be fully supported by my community.”

The multidisciplinary artist, still oozing with Japanese inspiration amongst her pieces, said the Cherry Blossom Festival is her best performing event of the year.

“It’s exciting. You hope for it to grow larger,” she said. “There are a lot of Japanese American festivals on the West Coast that are even larger than this, so we’d love to see it get to that size.”

Irene Sumida, who moved with her husband to Denver from California in 2021, agreed. 

“It’s interesting,” Sumida said of the festival, after backing Tsutsui-Kunitake’s claim that there are larger festivals on the West Coast.

Regardless, she noted that seeing people come out to celebrate her culture is wonderful.

“The people in Denver are very nice, open, accepting, friendly. We feel very safe here and welcome here,” Sumida said. “Even the dogs are nice,” she laughed.

Although the festival may be smaller than those out west, it’s growing every year, according to Shigaya. 2024 is the biggest festival ever, boasting the most performers and vendors yet.

“It’s so much hard work. It’s a lot of long hours, but when you are at the festival and seeing people enjoy themselves and learning things that they normally wouldn’t learn about, it’s really fulfilling. It’s fulfilling to see people enjoy something that’s part of you,” Shigaya concluded.

The free festival continues at Sakura Square from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday. More information can be found at CherryBlossomDenver.org.