The tuna arrives whole, laid out on a table in the middle of a downtown Denver plaza, and a crowd gathers to watch it come apart. Over the course of a demonstration, a skilled cutter breaks the fish down into its component parts — the fatty belly, the lean loins, the trimmings — narrating as he goes. It is a spectacle you would expect to find at a market in Tokyo or Osaka, not on a single block of 19th Street between Larimer and Lawrence, a short walk from Coors Field. But that block is Sakura Square, and for three days in September it will host Spirit of Japan, a festival built around exactly this kind of collision between the everyday and the extraordinary.
Spirit of Japan runs Sept. 18–20, 2026, marking its third year. Presented by the Sakura Foundation in partnership with SP-RING, the event spreads across Sakura Square with Japanese street food, sake, shochu, whiskey and cocktails, cultural performances, and the return of the tuna cutting demonstration that has become its signature draw. General admission runs Saturday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tickets are $15 for general admission and $49 for VIP, with children 10 and under admitted free. Food and drinks are sold separately, starting around $4, and every guest leaves with a Spirit of Japan tote.
The food lineup reads like a tour of Japanese festival stalls: okonomiyaki, the savory pancake griddled with cabbage and meat and finished with tangy sauce and Kewpie mayo; takoyaki, the molten octopus-filled dough balls; yakitori, karaage, yakisoba, udon, steamed pork buns. On the sweet side there is kakigori, the shaved ice that has the texture of fresh snow, and ishi yakiimo, roasted sweet potatoes. The drink side leans on small-batch producers — sparkling sake from Ichido, whiskey and spirits from the House of Suntory — with experts on hand to talk through craftsmanship and tasting notes.
This year's festival spotlights Yamagata, a mountainous prefecture in Japan's Tohoku region. The timing is deliberate: Yamagata and Colorado established a sister-state relationship in December 1986, making 2026 the partnership's 40th anniversary. Yamagata is known for producing roughly 70 percent of Japan's cherries, and its sake will be poured and discussed throughout the weekend. The connection runs deeper than a single festival — Colorado maintains a web of sister relationships with Japanese cities and prefectures, from Boulder's pairing with Yamagata City to Denver's with Takayama, and the state-level Yamagata bond is among the most durable.
But the real story of Spirit of Japan is the ground it stands on. Sakura Square is the last remaining block of Denver's Japantown, a neighborhood that once stretched from lower downtown north into Five Points and held hundreds of Japanese-owned businesses. Its roots go back to World War II, when Japanese Americans were incarcerated under national internment policy and Colorado Governor Ralph L. Carr took a stance that was, at the time, nearly unique among elected officials: he welcomed them. Denver's Japanese American population swelled from 324 people in 1940 to 2,310 by 1944. The Tri-State/Denver Buddhist Temple was built at its current location in 1947 and became the community's anchor.
That community was nearly erased twice. First by internment, then by urban renewal. In the 1960s, the Denver Urban Renewal Authority's projects leveled much of the surrounding neighborhood — the same wave of demolition that scattered cultural districts across American cities and left, in Denver's case, a landscape of parking lots. Sakura Square itself was the community's answer: a mixed-use development built on land secured in 1971, opening in 1973 with a two-weekend celebration that included the dedication of the square and Tamai Tower, the first Cherry Blossom Festival, and a Wisteria Festival. The block has been the hub of Japanese and Japanese American life in the Rocky Mountain region ever since.
Today the square holds the Tamai Tower apartments, ground-floor shops and restaurants, a small Japanese garden, and busts of three figures central to its history: Governor Carr, honored for his apology to Japanese Americans for their internment — the only elected official in the country to make one publicly; Minoru Yasui, the civil rights lawyer who challenged the legality of internment; and the Reverend Yoshitaka Tamai, the Buddhist priest who helped establish the community's spiritual home. Pacific Mercantile, the oldest Asian grocery store in Colorado, has operated on the block since 1945 and is now passing to a fourth generation of the founding family.
The Sakura Foundation, which presents Spirit of Japan, grew out of that history. It was established in 2014 through a reorganization of the entity that had long managed the block, previously known as Tri-State Buddhist Church Apartments, Inc. The foundation owns Sakura Square LLC and carries a mission to sustain the temple and celebrate Japanese American heritage. Its programs include the Mirai Generations Leadership Program, the Chibi no Gakko cultural school, scholarships, community grants, and the annual Denver Cherry Blossom Festival each June, which draws tens of thousands back to the block.
That mission has taken on a new urgency. The commercial building on the square, constructed in the early 1970s, is deteriorating and has been held up by scaffolding for years — decorated with lanterns, but scaffolding nonetheless. In October 2025 the foundation applied for roughly $30 million in financing from the Denver Downtown Development Authority to address the structure's needs, with board members describing hopes for a new mixed-use project that would keep Japanese cultural tradition at the center of the block. Several board members grew up in the neighborhood when it was a thriving Japantown. They are, in a sense, trying to do again what their predecessors did in 1973: hold the ground.
Seen against that backdrop, a festival with a tuna demonstration and a sake list is not just a good weekend. It is the mechanism by which the block stays visible, and by which the foundation funds the work of keeping it. "Spirit of Japan is an opportunity for guests to explore Japanese street and festival foods emblematic of Japanese life," said Stacey Shigaya, the foundation's executive director. "Folks in Denver and Colorado are open to new food experiences and like to try new spirits, and this event gives them an opportunity to sample all kinds of Japanese sake, whiskey, gin, beer and more."
A portion of proceeds supports that work. And the festival's ambitions extend past the food: organizers frame it as a chance to experience Japanese culture through regional introduction and traditional arts, with taiko drumming and other performances filling out the weekend. Japan's Consul-General in Denver has attended in past years, taking in the booths and the tuna cutting alike.
For anyone who has spent time on that block — who remembers buying imported candy and magazines at Pacific Mercantile long before the internet made such things easy to find — the festival is a reminder of what Sakura Square has always been: a place where a specific culture is not preserved behind glass but served hot, poured generously, and carved open in front of a crowd. The tuna demonstration, in that light, is less a gimmick than a thesis statement. Something whole is brought to the block, taken apart with skill and care, and shared out. The block has been doing that for more than fifty years.