In Japanese tradition, cherry blossoms signify recent begins and new beginnings. However, as they fall, additionally they signify the fragility and impermanence of life.
Clark School’s annual springtime Sakura Competition, held Thursday afternoon close to rows of flowering cherry bushes within the middle of campus, was a time for pleasure and a time for melancholy, too, Clark School President Karin Edwards mentioned.
That’s due to the lack of two native leaders who have been instrumental in constructing Vancouver’s robust relationship with Japan, in addition to constructing magnificence on the Clark School campus. Former Vancouver Mayor Royce Pollard died earlier this 12 months. Former Clark School President Bob Knight died late final 12 months.
“In Japanese culture, the short life of cherry blossoms is compared to the short life of humans,” Vancouver Mayor Anne McEnerny-Ogle mentioned at Thursday’s occasion.
Knight and Pollard, she mentioned, “understood the importance of building an international connection. We celebrate their legacy.”
The Sakura Competition is a celebration of Vancouver’s ongoing friendship with Japan and with sister metropolis Joyo.
The primary tokens of that friendship got to Vancouver in 1990. That’s when the president of America Kotobuki Electronics Inc., John Kageyama, commemorated the one centesimal anniversary of Washington statehood by presenting the town a present of 100 Shirofugen cherry bushes. In a joint celebration of Arbor Day and Earth Day, the bushes have been planted on Clark School’s fundamental campus in April 1990.
Just a few years later, in 1995, Pollard established the shut and fruitful sister metropolis relationship it has loved ever since with Joyo. In 2006, one other present — this one from Chihiro Kanagawa, the CEO of Japanese chipmaker SEH America — facilitated the creation of the Royce E. Pollard Japanese Friendship Backyard on the Clark School campus, and the start of the annual Sakura Competition.
There are actually 200 flowering cherry bushes at Clark School, and each spring they unfurl clouds of delicate pink blossoms in abundance.
“They remind us that following every ending comes a new beginning,” Edwards mentioned. “A fresh start, and brighter days ahead.”
Edwards, who turned Clark School’s president in February 2020, mentioned Thursday marked the primary time in her tenure up to now that the annual Sakura Competition wasn’t pushed indoors by rain.
New to this 12 months’s Sakura Competition was a butterfly backyard inside an enclosed tent, the place contributors might stand up shut and private with the fluttering creatures. (There was speculated to be a butterfly launch into the sky, however that was canceled due to anticipated in a single day chilly that the butterflies doubtless wouldn’t survive.) Contained in the Gaiser Scholar Middle have been Japanese-themed shows and actions, together with haiku readings, a Taiko drum efficiency and painted by hand cherry blossom cookies by college students in Clark’s skilled baking pastry arts program.
