Shas­tri Boodan

The vi­brant colours of Car­ni­val, the in­fec­tious rhythms of so­ca and the warmth of Caribbean cul­ture found a home thou­sands of miles away in Japan, as So­ca in Japan cel­e­brat­ed an­oth­er suc­cess­ful pro­duc­tion from Sep­tem­ber 17 to 24.

Kegon Tou­s­saint, own­er and di­rec­tor of So­ca in Japan, said this year’s event was phe­nom­e­nal as he re­flect­ed on the steady growth of the ini­tia­tive and the in­creas­ing con­fi­dence of a team that has spent four years build­ing a Caribbean car­ni­val ex­pe­ri­ence in the Asian na­tion.

Tou­s­saint told We Life and Cul­ture that the event con­tin­ued to at­tract strong sup­port from the com­mu­ni­ty, with a high rate of re­turn­ing pa­trons.

There were sev­er­al sta­ples like J’ou­vert in Japan / In De Jun­gle, Is­land Na­tions / Edo El­e­gance and Japan Caribbean Car­ni­val (JCC), an an­nu­al street pa­rade and fes­ti­val fea­tur­ing mas bands, flags, and cos­tumes much like what lo­cals ex­pe­ri­ence on Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day.

“I’m ex­treme­ly pleased with this year’s pro­duc­tion. The cos­tumes were a ma­jor high­light. They were beau­ti­ful­ly de­signed, vi­brant and looked in­cred­i­ble on the road. See­ing every­thing come to­geth­er—from the de­signs and fit­tings to the fi­nal pre­sen­ta­tion—was very re­ward­ing,” Tou­s­saint said.

Be­hind the spec­ta­cle was a pro­duc­tion team whose ex­pe­ri­ence has grown with each stag­ing of the Japan Caribbean Car­ni­val. The lessons learnt over four years, Tou­s­saint said, were now ev­i­dent in the plan­ning, co­or­di­na­tion and ex­e­cu­tion of the event.

“This was our fourth year pro­duc­ing the Japan Caribbean Car­ni­val, and the ex­pe­ri­ence our team has gained over those four years is re­al­ly show­ing. We now have strong sys­tems and process­es in place, every­one un­der­stands their role, and we have be­come very con­fi­dent in our abil­i­ty to de­liv­er the pro­duc­tion,” he said.

The car­ni­val ex­pe­ri­ence ex­tend­ed be­yond the cos­tumes and road cel­e­bra­tions, with or­gan­is­ers plac­ing greater em­pha­sis on en­ter­tain­ment, sight­see­ing and the lo­gis­tics re­quired to move par­tic­i­pants be­tween ac­tiv­i­ties.

Tou­s­saint said the per­for­mances were al­so out­stand­ing, while the tour pack­ages were en­hanced with ad­di­tion­al sight­see­ing ex­pe­ri­ences, im­proved trans­porta­tion arrange­ments and new tech­nol­o­gy, in­clud­ing the in­tro­duc­tion of the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s own So­ca in Japan (SIJ) ap­pli­ca­tion.

The aim was to give pa­trons a more com­plete ex­pe­ri­ence, com­bin­ing the ex­cite­ment of Caribbean fes­tiv­i­ties with op­por­tu­ni­ties to ex­plore Japan.

But the week was not with­out its chal­lenges.

Ty­phoon Du­juan af­fect­ed two ac­tiv­i­ties: the sec­ond Ka­maku­ra ex­cur­sion and one of the Street Kart ex­pe­ri­ences.

How­ev­er, with more than 20 ac­tiv­i­ties and events sched­uled, many run­ning si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, Tou­s­saint said the weath­er sys­tem did not sig­nif­i­cant­ly dis­rupt the wider pro­gramme.

He cred­it­ed the team’s con­tin­gency plan­ning for help­ing to keep the fes­tiv­i­ties on track.

The or­gan­is­ers al­so had to re­spond to air­line de­lays ex­pe­ri­enced by some pa­trons be­cause of me­chan­i­cal is­sues. Al­though these dis­rup­tions were out­side the com­pa­ny’s con­trol, the team co­or­di­nat­ed air­port pick­ups and ho­tel trans­fers to help those af­fect­ed re­join the pro­gramme with as lit­tle in­con­ve­nience as pos­si­ble.

For Tou­s­saint, the abil­i­ty to re­spond to un­ex­pect­ed sit­u­a­tions while main­tain­ing the qual­i­ty of the ex­pe­ri­ence was a re­flec­tion of the team’s com­mit­ment and grow­ing pro­fes­sion­al­ism.

Be­yond the fes­tiv­i­ties, Tou­s­saint sees the ini­tia­tive as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to strength­en cul­tur­al ties be­tween Japan and the Caribbean, in­tro­duc­ing peo­ple to the re­gion’s mu­sic, tra­di­tions, cre­ativ­i­ty and cel­e­bra­to­ry spir­it in a set­ting far re­moved from the is­lands where car­ni­val orig­i­nat­ed.

“We’re build­ing more than a car­ni­val ex­pe­ri­ence; we’re cre­at­ing a cul­tur­al bridge be­tween Japan and the Caribbean,” he said.

With the fourth stag­ing com­plet­ed, at­ten­tion has al­ready shift­ed to 2027, when the Japan Caribbean Car­ni­val will cel­e­brate its fifth year.

For those trav­el­ling from the Caribbean, So­ca in Japan of­fers an op­por­tu­ni­ty to car­ry a piece of home across the world. For par­tic­i­pants in Japan, it pro­vides a chance to ex­pe­ri­ence the en­er­gy and ex­u­ber­ance of Caribbean car­ni­val while dis­cov­er­ing the tra­di­tions and at­trac­tions of their own coun­try through a dif­fer­ent cul­tur­al lens.