Nepal’s Dashain festival finds new meaning abroad

Yubaraj Katuwal and other Nepali migrants celebrated Dashain, Nepal’s largest Hindu festival, in Hiroshima, Japan, finding a sense of community while missing home.

Katuwal recalled a conversation with his father before returning to Japan in 2023, where his father urged him to visit while he still could, a premonition that proved true when his father died later that year.

The group of Nepali language students, anticipating their separate paths to vocational training in 2025, sought to recreate the traditions of Dashain despite being far from family and familiar customs. They shared food, applied tika (a coloured paste applied to the forehead) to one another, and sang songs, attempting to build a sense of belonging in a foreign land.

Katuwal reflected on the differences between celebrating Dashain in Nepal, where he had relatives and a home but limited funds, and in Japan, where he had some financial stability but lacked those personal connections. He and his friends carried financial burdens and anxieties about family back home, yet they were determined to maintain their cultural practices. They understood that while they could pursue opportunities abroad, they might never get the chance to share those experiences with loved ones again.

The celebration beside the Motoyasu river, a site marked by the 1945 atomic bombing, underscored the bittersweet nature of their experience, a joyful occasion tinged with the pain of distance and loss.