Ceremony Closes Without Major Incident as an Estimated 12,000 General Visitors Attend

The city's civic engagement division released its summary of Monday's Arrival Remembrance Day ceremony at Kishihama Park on the 8th. Based on crowd-counting cameras and entry records around the venue, an estimated 12,000 members of the public attended. Officials said foot traffic peaked around the noon start of the ceremony, but moving the bag-check gates an hour earlier, to 11 a.m., as previously reported, prevented the kind of queue buildup that could have caused dangerous crowding. No injuries were reported. Attendance was well above last year's estimated 8,000-plus, and an official suggested that both the milestone anniversary and recent news coverage of the cross-party push for a national holiday, previously reported, likely contributed to the higher turnout.

The previously reported vehicle closure around the venue, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., proceeded as planned without major traffic backups. Two extra Bayside Monorail trains, also previously reported, ran as scheduled and appear to have eased congestion during peak arrival hours. While the division credited the "match between the closure window and the extra trains," it also acknowledged several complaints that signage for a bicycle parking area some distance from the venue was hard to follow, and said it would consider adding more directional signs next year.

This year's newly introduced volunteer transport program for invited first-generation settlers proved popular, drawing more than 240 applicants for 80 slots. In the end, 79 rides were carried out. Misaki Asakura, 20, the university student who drove 101-year-old Tane Kishitani, previously profiled in this paper, said, "Both ways, the car was quieter than I expected. It was only on the way home that she talked a little about the song." The civic engagement division said handling the surplus of applicants and easing route congestion would be priorities for next year, and that it is considering expanding the program.

For the 18 first-generation settlers unable to attend in person, the ceremony was relayed to three welfare facilities across the city, as previously reported. A staff member at one facility said, "When the lullaby began, the room in front of the television went quiet. None of us understand the words either, but something still came through." The division noted two complaints about the relay's audio and video quality and said it would review the equipment ahead of next year.

Cleanup of the venue was largely finished on the night of the 7th and completed by the morning of the 8th. The volume of trash collected was roughly in line with comparable past events, with no notable increase. Seventeen lost items — parasols, jackets, and the like — were turned in to police. The division also noted, regarding the previously reported attendance of all 94 members of the cross-party holiday bill group, that their presence caused no disruption to pedestrian flow.

As of the 8th, discussions are leaning toward keeping Kishihama Park as next year's venue. Given this year's higher turnout, officials are considering revising the layout of the temporary stage and flower altar, but the division said, "Moving the location isn't under consideration right now. There's a weight to having held this at the same bayfront spot for 51 years." How to handle any future overlap with the spring-tide observation campaign will be discussed again with TDA after that campaign's results are published in late September. "Getting through this one day a year again without a serious incident is, above all, what matters most," the division's chief said in closing.