While cherry blossoms floated down the Communications breezeway, booming drums beat rhythmically across the crowd as taiko drummers ushered in spring in traditional Japanese style.
The Cherry Blossom Festival serves as a reminder for the appreciation of nature as it blooms to life once again, Humanities Division Associate Dean Elise Geraghty said.
“The beauties of nature come when they come and leave when they leave so we have to remember to live in the moment and appreciate those things when we do have them,” Geraghty said.
EC showed its appreciation March 4 with thunderous drumming, graceful string-plucking, haiku reading, and the awarding of the Dr. Nadine Ishitani Hata Scholarship.
To open and close the ceremony, world-renowned musician Yukiko Matsuyama, Saeko Kujiraoka, and Edward Nakashima performed both taiko and koto, Japanese drum and string instruments. Thomas Lew, dean of humanities, gave a brief historical overview on each of the instruments.
“In feudal times the japanese used the taiko to motivate soldiers and to set a marching pace. Villages communicated with other villages through the use of taiko,” Lew said.
“If I were still teaching English, I’d wish I had the taiko to keep my students awake,” he added.
The Festival awarded the Dr. Nadine Ishitani Hata Scholarship to Kyle Graves, a second-year radiology student.
Hata, a former EC vice president, created the scholarship for health science students before she had passed of cancer.
“Nadine wanted to give encouragement to the people who make up the infrastructure of the health sciences in appreciation of their care for her,” California State University Dominguez Hills emeritus professor of history, Donald Hata, her husband, said.
She wanted to give the scholarship to support technicians in a field where information becomes obsolete very quickly, he said.
Graves, who described himself as honored to receive the scholarship, was present to accept his award.
“I want to be an impact for someone else just as Hata was impacted,” Graves said. “Sometimes I’m the one helping a patient, and sometimes I’m the one in the bed. We have to have compassion for one another.”
Graves worked with Sony Entertainment for 14 years before he decided to switch to a career in radiology.
“I’m looking ahead to my studies in Computed Tomography and Nuclear Medicine, which I suspect will be very challenging,” Graves said, “but rewarding to know that I can have some sort of positive influence or encouragement on patients.”
Among the other notable attendees was Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga, an activist who played a crucial role in the Redress Movement which implicated premeditated actions against Japanese Americans by the federal government, was in attendance.
“The ceremony is a wonderful educational tool to try to bridge the communities and teach about the wonderful traditions of Japan,” she said.
