‘Lantern Song’ Stirs Memories, Lessons

Bonbu Stories Member Shares Experiences With Grief, Gatha’s Impact

Editor’s note: Kendall Tani, a Bonbu Stories member, has written the following article about her experiences with grief, loss, and the impact of the new BCA gatha “Lantern Song,” which Bonbu Stories performed at Obon festivals last year. Bonbu Stories is scheduled to perform this year at BCA temples and churches.

FYI

To view Bonbu Stories performing “Lantern Song,” go to: bit.ly/4izBKRo

---

Imagine: You’re sitting at the kitchen table, belly and heart equally warm and full after eating a delicious home-cooked meal for yourself and your loved ones, and it’s time to get the leftovers packed and the dishes cleaned up.

You look at the leftovers in the pot, estimating just how much it is. But ladle by ladle, your doubt grows inverse to the quickly diminishing fillable space. Of course — the dish is not big enough. How could it have ever been?

So, you’re forced to fit the overflow in multiple smaller containers, much to your chagrin. 

For me, I’ve come to think of this scenario as an analogy for my grief. Grief is a meal born of multiple collaborators — of community, of context, of time, and of love. It has been nourishing in its capacity to bring me closer to my loved ones and community, and overwhelming when it has flooded its vessels. 

There were times where I consumed it solely for sustenance and not for taste, and other times where I indulged myself. At times, I pushed it to the back of my mind and allowed it to fester and mold over until I could no longer avoid addressing it on my own, and other times, it was a meal I eagerly shared with friends over art and music for hours on end. 

Of course, I am no stranger to the little griefs of daily life — mourning a new haircut or savoring my last cup of good matcha until I can buy more — but the gargantuan grief of death and loss has been relatively new to me. 

In late September 2023, almost a year into the process of creating “Lantern Song,” a dear friend of mine died very suddenly in a biking accident. It was an emotional devastation that I suppose I’ve been lucky to have just felt for the first time at the age of 29, but it has only kept building on itself with the passing of my maternal great-grandmother in January 2024 and then the passing of my paternal grandmother in June 2024. 

Grief has completely restructured my life and continues to do so even now — in 2025.

Through all of this, working on and performing “Lantern Song” with my fellow Bonbu Stories members (or bonbus) and being in community with everyone who has collaborated with us and danced to and listened to our song has been the communal dinner party to help me ease my sorrows and swallow and digest my grief.

Bonbu Stories 

Bonbu Stories is: Miharu Okamura, a Yonsei singer-songwriter from the Buddhist Church of Oakland; Sydney Shiroyama, a Yonsei Minister’s Assistant and taiko player from Palo Alto Buddhist Temple; Miko Shudo, a Yonsei singer-songwriter and music instructor from the Oxnard Buddhist Temple; Kendall Tani (myself), a Yonsei visual artist, poet, and taiko player from Mammoth Lakes; and Vicky Zhang, a first-generation Chinese American/Australian taiko player and composer from the Bay Area. 

During our first project, “Ways of Being,” we had only just met each other and had no idea what our creative process was going to look like. I was anxious and I didn’t know what I could contribute and how I was going to do so, but we started with one idea that became the backbone of the piece and the rest — instrumentation, vocals, taiko, choreography — fell into place so neatly, so magically, with such care and intention. I have never found it so easy to be so vulnerable and trusting in creating art with another group of people.  

The size of the ask for “Lantern Song” was certainly intimidating to us despite it also being an honor to add our own voices to Obon. 

“Lantern Song” was commissioned by the BCA Music Bon Odori Taiko Subcommittee in honor of the BCA’s 125th anniversary in 2024. The subcommittee wanted to promote young Buddhist voices to commemorate the anniversary, and it was funded by the BCA Music Committee budget request to BCA.  

The YouTube video of “Lantern Song” now has 8,000 views and was funded through the BCA Music Committee Endowment Foundation account through a generous donation from the estate of Mrs. Yumiko Hojo.

On a personal level, I was again apprehensive about what I could contribute, lacking Buddhist knowledge and, at the time, lived experience with death and grief. Like our other projects, however, I didn’t need to worry about the content and relied instead on our process, drawing from each of our diverse strengths, relationships and artistry to synthesize our lived experiences to form a cohesive whole. 

Okamura and Shudo wrote the lyrics, melody and instrumentation as a conversation between ourselves and our ancestors. Zhang later wrote the taiko accompaniment, and all of us contributed to the Odori choreography, coordinating with our lyrics and also taking inspiration from some of our favorite existing moves. 

Since our founding in 2019, making art as a part of Bonbu Stories has been one long continuous lesson on the value and importance of connection and community, of individual yielding to and contributing to the collective. We’ve always looked to our mentors for assistance and guidance and reached out to friends to collaborate through song or visuals, but “Lantern Song” is arguably the best example of this as we absolutely could not have done it alone. 

Its large scope afforded us the opportunity to work with our artistic mentors, studio professionals, and to collaborate with additional musical and visual artists to create a true showing of community.

The premise for our piece was inspired by an early conversation with our friends and mentors BCA Minister Emeritus Rev. Mas Kodani, Nobuko Miyamoto, and PJ and Roy Hirabayashi. Rev. Kodani shared a story about hanging Obon lanterns a few years ago. 

He had been attending Obon for decades, but only realized that year that he knew every name on all the lanterns and had known every person who had passed. He saw this as a reminder that Obon is not meant to only be a family festival, but that “(Obon is) about death and remembering your dead relatives … if you avoid death, you are avoiding life. You can’t have one without the other.” 

Inspired by this, one of our singer-songwriters, Miko Shudo, said in an interview with Discover Nikkei that “seeing the lanterns reminds us that our ancestors aren’t really gone — they’re in our hearts and minds as we live and carry on with life.” This conversation helped us establish the foundation for our song. 

Through Okamura’s and Shudo’s contacts, we were able to work with a professional studio team that brought our song to life. Recording in Grandma’s Dojo Studio was a breeze to me as someone who has never been recorded professionally before, and while I know nothing about sound engineering, the arranging, mixing and mastering were all absolutely perfect. We were also able to rope in many different artists to collaborate with us throughout our process. 

Musician friends contributed background vocals and koto instrumentation to our track and we had guest performers join us during select Obons to play various instruments or sing live as the sanghas danced. 

Visual artist friends created our music video and taught us to hand-carve stamps which we used in our interactive workshops to create memorial lanterns, and guided us in screen printing our own happi coats for our Obon uniform. Every single person who contributed to the project provided a vital voice that made it that much more special. 

‘Okagesama De’

In the early days after loss, I often sat with my meal of grief, attempting to eat it, but really just playing with my food as I mulled over one phrase that consistently resonated with me: “okagesama de,” or “thanks to you/because of you, I am.” 

I had originally heard the phrase used in reference to the lineages of immigrants who made our lives possible. But on a more personal level, I found the sentiment fitting for my loved ones who more recently passed. 

I wished I could tell them how much they meant to me and how thankful I was for making me who I am today, through blood or influence or both. But the more I thought about it, the more my tears would flow and the more my throat would dry up and tighten, holding hostage the gratitude, regrets, apologies, “I love yous,” and “I miss yous” I desperately wanted to say. 

There was a visceral heft and ache in my chest with all the love my heart still had for them that needed to be released, but there was seemingly nowhere for it to go. I was scared that if I did release this love the way I felt I needed to, there would only be a void left in its wake. So, I stayed stuck and sat by myself, picking at this meal, repeating the phrase to myself.

Soon after my friend died, we did a webinar with the BCA Music Committee about “Lantern Song,” where fellow bonbu Miko Shudo talked about her inspiration for the lyrics which she elaborated upon in an interview with Discover Nikkei: 

“In my own experience with grief after losing my mom and baachan a couple years ago, I found tremendous comfort in the teaching of ‘No Birth, No Death’ by the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. Just like a cloud never dies, but instead transforms into rain, then to a river, ocean and a cloud again, our very heartbeat is an extension of our parents and grandparents and so on. As long as my heart beats, so do theirs, and to me, it makes their presence feel very real and alive.”

Being so stuck, picking at my food, this was the exact thing I needed to hear to help me start eating and digesting my grief. I still cried for a day or five or 20 days repeating “okagesama de” to myself, but tried to keep these teachings with me as the months went on.

“Lantern Song” and Bonbu Stories proved to be the best thing for my mourning; I don’t know how I would have gotten through it otherwise. It is incredibly cliche, but I didn’t realize the profundity of grief until I had to suffer through it. 

“Okagesama de” was a pertinent phrase and one of comfort for me, but I didn’t know where or how to direct my feelings and energy that I attached to it. On its own, the phrase is just memory, and I had been stuck stewing in it; but “okagesama de” together with “Lantern Song” is remembrance in practice. 

At the height of my emotional pain, I felt a desperate desire and need to express my anguish and love to the whole world; I wanted to be heard, but I really wanted to be understood. 

West LA Workshop  

Sharing and performing “Lantern Song” gave the phrase direction and purpose, and fulfilled all of these desires and allowed me to be witnessed, held, and loved in the most painful of circumstances. 

Throughout the past year, it became a vehicle for a mutual release and catharsis between performer and viewer/participant, and, in doing so, was a vehicle for communal healing. 

Our first workshop, held at West Los Angeles Buddhist Temple on Feb. 24, 2024, was exciting as it was the first time we were performing and teaching our piece in person. 

People came from all over Southern California, including Santa Barbara and San Diego, to learn the dance (though they had already learned from our tutorial video!) and spend time in community with us. 

We set up some craft stations, one a remembrance tassel station where attendees could write down the names of their loved ones to put on our own communal Bonbu Stories lantern, and the other a tenugui-making station where attendees could stamp and decorate their own tenugui for use in the summer. 

One woman included a lantern and a name for every ancestor on her tenugui and told us a little of her family’s history. It was so touching that she had created something so thoughtful from what we thought would be just a fun craft activity. 

We were truly overwhelmed with emotion, though, when we began teaching the dance and saw everyone dancing with us in a circle for the first time. To see our work come alive outside of ourselves, with everyone enthusiastically participating, was heartwarming and a bit surreal. 

Several people came up to us afterward telling us how much our song meant to them or how they resonated with the English lyrics in their own journeys with loss. I found so much comfort and meaning in this exchange of vulnerability and love; it was not lost on me how special it was that our work had resonated with people so deeply.

Senshin’s Obon 

Our first Obon performance of the season was at Senshin Buddhist Temple on July 6, 2024, an Obon I had not previously attended. I had been warned for years that it wasn’t like other Obons, that it was only dancing and not a festival, and thus special in some way I didn’t quite realize yet. 

I still felt very welcomed as the temple was the birthplace of our song in some ways, with us having taken inspiration from Rev. Kodani and also having shared a first draft of the song at the temple in 2023. 

The warnings turned out to be true: Senshin’s Obon was unlike any other I had been to and was incredibly special, one I will remember fondly and will actively try to return to in the future. Not having grown up Buddhist, I felt like I got the best sense of the meaning of Obon from participating at Senshin. 

Performing taiko with fellow bonbu Vicky Zhang on the yagura and dancing in the innermost circle with the Bon Odori instructors were definitely an exhilarating emotional high, but they were both made better in context of where we were. 

From being a part of the entry procession to “Obon no Uta” to performing to offering incense to lighting an oil lamp in the sentō shōgon display, the rituals and practice of remembrance were simultaneously invigorating and grounding, and they all served to remind us of our purpose for being there, together. 

I was able to dance in the circle with my cousin for the first time, and I later lit an oil lamp in honor of the grandmother that we share, who passed at 99 years old.  

Makawao’s Obon

In a summer of emotional highs and special opportunities, another highlight was getting the chance to lead our dance at Makawao Hongwanji’s Obon on Maui on July 27, 2024. 

My great-grandmother passed at the age of 105, and had been a lifelong, dedicated member of the temple in addition to being a beloved and well-known community member. 

It was through her and her memorial service I attended in the spring that this special opportunity even came up with the temple not being affiliated with the BCA. 

With financial help from TaikoVentures and the generosity of my family, Rev. Kerry Kiyohara, and the Makawao Sangha, we were all able to stay for a long weekend in a new but familiar and welcoming community. 

Being so far from California, I didn’t see or talk to my great-grandmother as much as I should have, or would have liked. I didn’t even get the chance to discuss this project with her or talk about her Buddhist practice, and I never got to show her our Bon Odori choreography as she had been an accomplished Bon Odori dancer herself (though the latter might have been for the best, as I’m not sure I could have handled her criticism). 

It was bittersweet to have this time in Makawao to remember my great-grandmother, and to learn more about her life after her death. My heart swelled with love and reverence, but ached with the regret that I was just learning all this now. 

During Obon, I wore a happi coat she had fashioned from old cotton tenugui from the temple as well as her wheel of dharma pendant that I inherited from her. Perhaps I was playing dress-up to feel closer to her and try to dispel the remorse I had, but it was easy to focus on my love for her and just enjoy it. I was able to dance to our song through my tears of joy and sorrow, and danced with my brother and my second cousins for the first time. 

It was so special to have so much of my extended family witness “Lantern Song.” They’re definitely biased, but our song and Bon Odori brought my grandmother to tears as she thought I would have made my great-grandmother proud, and the song impressed and resonated with my aunties and uncles. I felt so embraced by my family, my Bonbu Stories family, and our new temple family that the grief was easy to swallow. 

‘Lantern Song’ Impact

In a BCA Music Committee interview in 2023 with Rev. Kodani and Nobuko Miyamoto, Miyamoto said that we need to remember that “(Obon) is a space created by our ancestors that we are stepping into,” that the generations before us who kept the tradition of Obon alive during World War II as well as our direct ancestors who have passed more recently are the reason why Obon is possible today and why it needs to continue, and why we were even able to make ‘Lantern Song’ in the first place. Obon is about death; who would we be without our dead loved ones? Where would we be without our ancestors, or without remembering them? Who will remember us when we die?

Miyamoto goes on to say, however, that while this is a space created by our ancestors, “We’re going to make it our own, one way or another.” 

We had been nervous about adding our work to the troves of Obon songs and respecting tradition while maintaining our voice, but a year on from the start of our tour, I do think we were able to accomplish what Miyamoto was talking about. 

We combined our gratitude, reverence, remembrance and grief into something that was uniquely us and nontraditional yet still resonant with people of all ages by capturing the essence of Obon. 

This past year has shown me that grief has been so much better as a shared meal, a potluck of everyone’s mourning brought to the table to digest over laughter, family, friends, love and art. 

The lyrics from “Lantern Song” are a dialogue between ourselves and our ancestors, but sharing and performing it felt like a dialogue between us as Bonbu Stories and our community.

I didn’t realize how special it was to be able to talk about death and loss with family and strangers alike without fear of being judged or rejected until the summer ended. 

Perhaps this is what I’ve been missing all my life being nearly 300 miles from the closest Buddhist temple, and if so, I’m a bit jealous and looking for ways to stay connected beyond this project. 

Regardless of whether or not we’ll continue to perform “Lantern Song,” or if it continues to be played at Obons in the years to come, I’ll carry this experience with me as long as my grief continues to be present, be it a snack or a meal fit for sharing.