ABOVE: Summer is Obon season in Hawaii, when Japanese Buddhist temples host celebrations in memory of departed ancestors. As with most traditions imported to Hawaii, bon dances have acquired a distinctive Island flavor. Dancers at Kauai Soto Zen Temple's bon dance fold their thumbs inward to make their hands look smaller and more graceful.
Preparation for the Flying Saucers begins hours before the dancing starts. On a warm summer afternoon in Hanapepe, volunteers at the Kauai Soto Zen Temple butter about four thousand slices of Love's Bakery white bread ahead of the evening's bon dance. The sandwiches of ground beef and American cheese will be pressed into pie irons set up over gas burners, then flipped over the fire until golden brown.
"This has been going on forever," says one of the volunteers over the clanging of the pie irons. "In the old days they used to make them over kiawe [mesquite] charcoal." The temple takes credit for originating the Flying Saucers in the '50s, though as with many flying saucer stories, the facts are hard to verify. But the snacks are now the signature food of Kauai's bon dances, and every summer the Japanese Buddhist temples around the island pool together their pie irons to make the sandwiches. "The churches are so small now that everybody helps each other," the volunteer says.
Temple memberships and the number of Japanese Buddhist temples in Hawaii have dwindled over the decades, but you wouldn't know it from the bon dances across the state—the one held at Soto Zen, the largest on Kauai, attracts about two thousand people each night. Throughout the islands, come summertime, the thrum of taiko drums and glow of paper lanterns strung from the temple rooftops to the yagura (a raised platform around which the dancers circle) signal bon dance season, when every weekend the different temples hold a festival to honor ancestors. They have also become the temples' largest fundraisers of the year, giving them a carnival-like atmosphere with merch, like temple bon dance tenugui—hand towels used in some of the dances or worn as headbands or draped around the neck—and lanterns fashioned from soda cans; game booths that might include a toilet bowl toss or goldfish scooping; and stands selling food from Flying Saucers to tteokbokki (Korean rice cakes).
12-year-old Kamryn Sakai has been attending bon dances since she was five; here, she's wearing her grandmother's kimono.
Hawaii's bon dances evolved from the Buddhist traditions that Japanese laborers and priests brought to the Islands in the late 1890s and early 1900s. On the plantations, Japanese communities built temples that functioned more like churches and community centers, hosting weddings and funerals in addition to baseball games and sumo matches. And every summer, the living came together for Obon season to welcome home the spirits of the dead.
Bon dances are said to have originated when a close disciple of Buddha, Maha Maudgalyayana (in Sanskrit) or Mokuren (in Japanese), discovered his deceased mother was suffering in the realm of hungry ghosts—beings whose desires can never be satisfied; no matter how much they gorge, they starve. Distraught, he asked the Buddha how to free her. The Buddha told Mokuren to prepare a feast for the monks returning from their summer retreat. He did and his mother was released. He danced with joy and gratitude, and it's said that this was the very first bon odori, or bon dance. Obon in Japan, where it usually lasts a week in August, is one of the biggest holidays in the country. In Hawaii the season spans the summer, and the bon dances are primarily associated with the temples: Each puts on a one- or two-night event (in the Islands "bon dances" refers to both the events and the dances themselves) that have become some of the most distinctive festivals in Hawaii.
Best friends Crystal Kamakea, Chelsey Chikahiro and Chloe Kamakea have been to eight bon dances together. Last summer, they wore kimono borrowed from Chikahiro's grandmother.
A few years ago I learned of the precariousness of many of Hawaii's Japanese Buddhist temples, some of them more than a century old, tucked all over the Islands, from now-industrial areas of Honolulu to remote corners in Hamakua, Hawaii Island, and Hana, Maui. Though Buddhism was once a dominant religion in Hawaii, the number of active temples has declined from almost two hundred to about fifty, their aging congregations ever shrinking. Emerging from the pandemic, coupled with the Buddhist philosophy that nothing is permanent, I felt an urgency to see these cultural touchstones before they disappear. The bon dances, open to all ethnicities and faiths, were an invitation.
In central Oahu, at the Waipahu Soto Zen temple, a pyramid-like structure made of volcanic rock with a shingled roof, I met a man who remembered attending the festivals since 1953, when the temple his grandparents helped found was on the nearby sugar plantation (the original temple was built in 1908; a new one was constructed in 1973). He reminisced about eating shave ice and staying out late with friends-and here he was, returning seventy years later.
Reaching Koboji Shingon Mission in Kalihi means traversing an alleyway and squeezing past a dumpster to get to a temple hemmed in by homes. Its festival has a small, neighborhood feel but huge taiko vibe, with full-body ecstatic drumming by the performers.
The Shinshu Kyokai Mission on busy Beretania Street reflects Hawaii's multifaith and multicultural population: The neighboring Central Union Church offers parking on its lawn, and concessions at the dance include oyako don (chicken and egg rice bowl) and laulau (a Hawaiian dish of pork wrapped in taro leaves).
The twin Kamakea sisters look forward to Obon season each year, and to helping perpetuate the tradition—what were once festivals to honor ancestors are now also fundraisers for the temples serving aging congregations.
At the Jikoen Hongwanji Mission, a temple rooted in Hawaii's Okinawan community, I learn that most bon dances in Hawaii blend Japanese and Okinawan traditions, the latter contributing eisa, a folk dance set to drums and the three-string sanshin, as well as andagi (Okinawan doughnuts), a staple at bon dances across Oahu. But only Jikoen has lion dancers, like those brought out in some areas in Okinawa during Obon to scare off any malicious ghosts following the spirits of returning ancestors.
The warm glow of lanterns in Honolulu's Shingon Mission contrasts with the fluorescence of the neighboring McDonald's and tall commercial buildings, built long after the century-plus-old wooden temple. Its bon dance was the same weekend as the Lahaina Hongwanji's would have been, but that temple had burned to the ground in the fires earlier that week. The Reverend Reyn Yorio Tsuru of the Shingon Mission told the attendees, "Keep in your thoughts those you're dancing for and why, and the traditions we are keeping alive tonight."
While traditional tabi tend to resemble socks that are worn with sandals, modern designs include these tabi kitten heel shoes, just one example of old-meets-new at the bon dances.
Hula and bon odori intermingle during the halftime show around the yagura at the Kauai Soto Zen Temple. Leilani Rivera Low and her halau (hula group) dance alongside Japanese folk dancers; some of their movements, like a graceful sweep of the arm, echo each other. Gerald Hirata, the president of the temple, started these cultural performances in 2009, when he became what he calls a "born-again Buddhist" and returned to the temple of his youth, which was founded in 1903—the first Japanese Zen Buddhist temple in Hawaii and the Americas. When the sugar industry started shrinking in the 1970s, the temple was moved from the plantation to Hanapepe town.
"I've always defined myself as a plantation boy who just grew up in this dusty little enclave in the middle of the sugarcane field," he says. "My grandfather settled early in [McBryde Sugar Plantation] Camp Two, working a plantation all of his life. My dad was born and raised in Camp Two. I was actually born in the hospital and raised in Camp Two and Camp Three." Hirata left the plantation for college and work, and everywhere he went, he would trace connections to Kauai. He served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Botswana, the antipode of Hawaii—literally the farthest he could get from home. He went from an island surrounded by the ocean and threaded with rivers and waterfalls to a landlocked nation, where rain is so valued that pula, which means rain in Setswana, is the national motto and also the name of its currency.
Hirata's experiences away always seemed to underscore the preciousness of home. He returned to Kauai in 1991. He had looked forward to bon dances when he was young, but when his father died, they took on new meaning. "I thought I could be with him again during Obon season," says Hirata. He also discovered that the bon dances he remembered from his childhood had changed little, especially in comparison with those on other islands. "The younger generation like the faster dances, the more modern styles," he says, "so you will see a lot of those dances incorporated on Oahu"—at one bon dance in Honolulu, the playlist included the Beach Boys. "But Kauai is very slow to move in that direction. We're still very traditional." (Not that this precludes a crowd favorite on both Oahu and Kauai: the Pokemon Ondo.)
"The goal is not just to keep the tradition alive, but to show our community members and whoever is interested in dancing the proper way to be dressed," says Dulcie Yano, who assists dancers with their elaborate attire, like kimono, obi, yukata and happi. Similar to kendo or taiko or hula, "There's a certain form to follow," she says.
"My grandmother was 'the dresser' for many dancers for as long as I've been alive and beyond," says Tammy Miyazaki Puu, seen above adjusting the obi that her niece, Caiya Abat, wears for the Lihue Hongwanji Mission's bon dance on Kauai. "It's a tradition in our families that will continue for a lifetime, as we feel it's important to pass these cultural practices to the next generation."
The earliest Japanese immigrants to Hawaii brought their regional bon dances—the Iwakuni Ondo, from Yamaguchi prefecture, remains a popular bon dance throughout the Islands. And at the Kauai Soto Zen temple, the nights end with the betcho dance, which possibly originated from the Fukushima or Niigata prefecture and evolved into a uniquely Kauai number. Despite its lewd name ("betcho" is slang for women's genitals), it's "just a fun, lively dance," Hirata says—one that stretches ten minutes or longer, as if to tire everyone out for the evening. Originally just drumming, singers in Hanapepe have added lyrics like the "Kau Kau Song," listing Hawaii's multicultural comfort foods, from miso soup to Filipino adobo to Kauai's ever-popular Flying Saucer. "When people come to Kauai, and even the Japanese nationals, they're just blown over by the festival, and they say, 'This is what I remember in my grandma's time,'" Hirata says. And aside from the songs and dances, there's also simply the feel of it: On Oahu the bon dances take place primarily in parking lots, whereas Kauai's spread over fields of grass.
In 2023 the temple received a $20,000 grant from the National Endowment of the Arts. That year, the program featured a performance of the hole hole bushi, the songs sung by the issei (first generation) of women plantation workers as they stripped leaves from sugarcane stalks (hole hole is the Hawaiian term for dried cane leaves, and bushi is Japanese for tune), akin to the blues sung in cotton fields in the South. The programs are part of Hirata's mission to maintain traditions, as the fifth-and sixth-generation Japanese in Hanapepe grow more distant from their ancestors' culture, while also "thinking about how cultures mix and how they can grow together," Hirata says. Hence the mash-up of hula and bon odori: "Old traditions continue because of new ideas," he likes to say.
Veteran dancer Tea Aawapuhi has a different kimono for every bon dance.
The last time Alison Brock wore a kimono was for her okuizome, or hundred-day birthday, when she didn't really have a say. She promptly threw up on it. Donning one "is not my cup of tea," she says now. And yet she's here in the bon dance dressing room at the Kauai Soto Zen temple, helping others into theirs because the other dressers "are getting old—not going to have anybody when they're gone."
Brock's mother, Dulcie Yano, is among the group of elders dressing the dancers and anyone who comes in with a yukata (a light, summer kimono) and obi (sash). At one time, proper attire was required at Kauai bon dances. A 1933 Kauai newspaper article stated that "all participants will be required to wear the customary kimonos and efforts will be made to have them properly worn during the course of the dance. This is being done to improve the slovenly appearance of the dancers that has spoiled the beauty of numerous other dances this season." Now the rules are more lax (though there is talk of bringing back some of the protocol to push back on the proliferation of skimpy clothes). But here a steady stream of women and children into the dressing room still prefer to wear a yukata, and they come for help getting into their clothes.
When Yano was growing up in Hanapepe, her mother dressed her for the bon dances the best she could ("I remember a lot of safety pins," Yano says). But as she became more serious about Japanese dance, "I realized that there were these ladies manning the dressing room, and so you just show up with your garments, and they would dress you and tie you up and then let you go out. The whole idea was they knew the right way to dress you." The right way, which meant no safety pins. It meant knowing how to tie the obi smooth and tight across the waist, sometimes with the help of cardboard; to know to lower the collar in the back for younger women to show off the nape of their necks; to dress for dancing, when you need more room to raise your arms; to wrap the kimono left over right (the reverse is reserved for dressing the dead). When her sensei passed away in 2017, Yano stepped in to fill the void, to help alongside volunteers like Pearl Shimizu, who has been working in the dressing room for about fifty years. Shimizu first learned how to dress people in kimono by watching—these days, she also learns the multitude of ways to tie an obi from YouTube.
"I like [Obon season] because it's a good time to remember where you came from and whom to be grateful to for allowing us to stand on their shoulders and to continue," says Gerald Hirata, president of the Kauai Soto Zen Temple in Hanapepe. "You find it in all cultures. It's a universal kind of thing."
Like the Flying Saucer makers, the dressers help at the bon dances across the island. Kauai is small enough that people can—and do—attend all the dances. The Kauai Buddhist Council coordinates the bon dance schedule among the six temples and sets the dance list, so it's the same at all the temples. This makes it easier to learn the movements to each dance and participate, unlike on Oahu, where each temple sets its own playlist. A few months before Obon season, each temple will usually hold practices for people to brush up on the choreography—many of the movements are abstract, though for some dances like the Tanko Bushi, a coal miner's song, motions include shoveling coal, shading eyes from the sun and pushing a cart of coal.
"I just love dancing for my family," says Lianne Tanaka in the dressing room as Yano cinches Tanaka's yukata. "I showed my grandpa this kimono before he passed away, so hopefully he'll see it." Normally, she tries to go to all the bon dances on the island, but this year she fractured her toe trying to dodge a cockroach. "I'll take it easy and won't do the fast songs. Fortunately, it was just the beginning, so hopefully I'll recover by the rest of the bon dance season. This is my favorite time of year."
When the last dancers have been dressed, Yano pulls on a happi, a straight-sleeved coat, simpler than a kimono, for herself. She makes her way to the dance circle, to join her daughter and her granddaughter, under the lanterns that light the way for the living and the spirits reuniting with their families.
