City and rite associations sign first accord on joint coming-of-age ceremony

The "two ceremonies" problem has long forced young people of Drifter families to choose: attend the city's coming-of-age ceremony, the Drifter rite of kishiwatari — the Shore Crossing — or attempt both. Because the Shore Crossing is held on the bayfront before dawn, the two events tend to collide, and one survey suggests that in recent years as many as twenty percent of eligible youth from Drifter households attended neither.

Under Friday's accord, next spring's ceremony will run in two parts. The first incorporates an abbreviated Shore Crossing: the hall lights dimmed to match the pre-dawn hour, a recitation in the first generation's language delivered facing the bay. The second part is the city's ceremony, unchanged. The rite's central gesture — touching the water — survives in the form of seawater carried from the bayfront.

Negotiations took three years. Within the federation of rite associations, opposition that "an abbreviated version sells the Shore Crossing off piecemeal" ran deep, and talks collapsed outright last year. What restarted them was a joint survey of the generation actually affected: of roughly 3,400 respondents, seventy percent chose "even in a changed form, better to do it together."

The elder who led the federation's negotiating team spoke after signing: "The worry about abbreviation has not gone away. The Shore Crossing is not a thousand-year rite. It is a young ceremony that we built in these fifty-one years. The young people taught me that this is exactly why we must not be too afraid of changing its form." The priority, he said, "was to stop producing children who feel they belong at neither ceremony."

The Shore Crossing itself is a spare ceremony held on the bayfront before dawn: after a recitation in the first generation's language, the young person stands barefoot at the waterline, touches the seawater with both hands, and returns. It is said to have begun in the internment years, as a way of teaching each child come of age "to touch, without fear, the sea you crossed." Families then share breakfast; there is no fixed menu, though most households, it is said, serve something hot in a bowl.

Reconciling it with the city's ceremony became difficult only in the last fifteen years, as the half-Drifter generation grew. Held family by family, the rite looks flexible on paper — but it requires a first- or second-generation witness, and as the witnesses age, fewer can stand on the bayfront before dawn. Year by year, the available dates converged on the same holiday as the city's ceremony.

The joint format will be trialed next spring at a single venue, the Bayside Civic Hall, and the city will survey all 12,000 eligible young people; a lottery will be held if applications exceed capacity. "Depending on the results, we will decide on expanding to all venues the year after," the department chief said. "Whatever does not work, we will publish without varnish."

A 19-year-old woman eligible next spring, whose mother is a third-generation Drifter, said: "My mother chose the Shore Crossing in her year, so there's no coming-of-age photo of her. I'll probably be the first generation that gets both in a single picture."