Newport festival celebrates connection to Japanese city

BEAT GOES ON: Taiko drummers perform at Cardines Field in Newport during the Newport Black Ships Festival in 2010. / COURTESY NANCY ROSENBERG
BEAT GOES ON: Taiko drummers perform at Cardines Field in Newport during the Newport Black Ships Festival in 2010. / COURTESY NANCY ROSENBERG

Visitors to Newport this weekend will find the historic harbor city’s Touro Park transformed into a Japanese cultural bazaar for the Black Ships Festival, which runs from July 18-21. The festival, which will mark its 30th anniversary this year, commemorates the first treaty between the United States and Japan and celebrates the friendship between Newport and its sister city, Shimoda, Japan.
The weekend features demonstrations of Japanese arts from Origami and calligraphy to Samurai swordplay and several martial arts. Two sushi and sake tastings aboard the schooner Aurora sell out every year, according to festival organizers.
The workshops can be a real learning experience for Americans, said Discover Newport President Evan Smith. “How much does that family know about Japan?” he said of vacationing families who stumble on the event. “It’s kind of like a geography 101 class for people.”
Several formal occasions highlight the festival’s significance as well. At the opening ceremonies July 19, a naval color guard and artillery salute will welcome a delegation from Shimoda and mark the start of festivities.
A black-tie gala the following night at Marble House will host Naval War College President Rear Admiral Walter Carter and Mayor Shunsuke Kusuyama of Shimoda, along with other representatives of both countries. Together they will crack open a wooden sake drum, a Japanese tradition for opening a grand event.
One thing absent from the Black Ships Festival, however, is any actual black ships. The name comes not from what festival-goers see today but from what the Japanese saw on their horizon more than 150 years ago.
In the early 19th century, Japan had isolated itself from the outside world for two centuries. That policy meant almost no trade or interaction between the island empire and the increasingly global naval powers in the West. Then, in 1853, President Millard Fillmore tasked Commodore Matthew Perry, a Newport native, with forming a treaty with Japan. Perry’s first attempt at an agreement in July of that year failed, according to his biography on the website of the U.S. Navy Museum. But when he returned the following February, he successfully negotiated the first-ever treaty between the two countries.
For the United States, the Treaty of Kanagawa guaranteed American ships could refuel in Japan and paved the way for a new trading alliance. But as Japan’s first trading agreement with the West, it signaled a dramatic change in policy for that country.
Thus Perry’s squadron of black-hulled ships sailing into Tokyo Bay became a symbol of a new era for the Japanese. The tradition of the Black Ships Festival began in Shimoda, where Perry signed the treaty. It has been a major annual event there for 74 years, billed as a celebration of “the Dawn of Japan’s Modernization.”
“It’s such a significant event in Shimoda,” said Newport festival organizer David Rosenberg. “You can walk the path where [Perry] left the ship and walked through the city, to the temple where he signed the treaty.”
The festival there, held this year in May, includes traditional garb, a parade and fireworks. A comical play re-enacts the signing of the treaty.
The United States first celebrated the treaty in 1953, with a stamp to celebrate the 100th anniversary. It shows a bust of Commodore Perry alongside a drawing of his famed black ships entering the harbor.
Rosenberg, who has been involved with all 30 Newport Black Ships Festivals, said the tradition of an annual festival in Shimoda inspired Newport organizers to launch their own celebration in 1983. The event has grown over the last three decades, he said.
It now includes more martial arts, including Aikido and the sword art of Laido, to help draw teenagers more interested in those events. Arts and cultural groups from around the country visit to watch the various art forms performed by masters of their craft.
Families, meanwhile, turn out in droves for the Taiko drum performance planned for July 21. Rosenberg estimates about 1,200 people fill Cardine’s Field to watch the show. Costumed drummers perform almost like dancers, beating out complex rhythms with broad, dramatic movements on their giant, round drums.
“People just go crazy. The energy’s fantastic,” said Discover Newport’s Smith of the drum concert.
The all-ages appeal of the festival’s events is one of its best features, said Jody Sullivan, executive director of the Newport County Chamber of Commerce. She said it can be a challenge to provide “family-friendly things to do with kids,” but Black Ships fits the bill.
“It’s a great, family type of event that you just don’t find anywhere else,” Sullivan said. “It’s wonderful that Newport can have such a big menu for people to choose from.”
Sullivan said the festival is a boon to local commerce as well. With so many events at local venues and visitors staying in the area, she said, Black Ships provides “a lot of trickle down” business for Newport.
Smith agreed the popular event helps the local economies of both Newport and Shimoda, and helps spread Newport’s name and reputation around the world. But he said it holds a deeper importance as well.
Smith has traveled to the Shimoda festival and welcomed the delegation to Newport. He explained he is often moved by the affection and understanding that can develop across a language barrier, particularly in light of the rancor and unrest in much of the world.
“I speak maybe four words of Japanese, they speak maybe four words of English, but you can communicate,” he said. After four days of festivities, “They leave, and you want to hug each other. And you say, ‘we can do this.’ ” •

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