Japanese Traditions Celebrated in Hawaii

From the 19th century, a number of Japanese workers began to emigrate to Hawaii to work on the sugar cane plantations. While this economic sector dwindled in importance over the course of the 20th century, the memory of its workers lives on, with an annual festival every summer across Hawaii’s 90 Buddhist temples. It is an event that captured the imagination of Ai Iwane, who documented the festivities in Kipuka (2018).

Born in 1975 in Tokyo, Ai Iwane studied in the United States at Petrolia High School where she worked on themes of self sufficiency and eco-responsible ways of living. She also observed different lifestyles in communities in the Philippines, Russia, and Taiwan.

Uprooting and persistent links

The title of the book, Kipuka, is a Hawaiian term referring to a place that has been left intact after a lava flow, an allegory for perpetuated memory. The name of the festival, Bon Odori, comes from a Japanese Buddhist dance that dates back over 500 years and is performed to honour the spirits of ancestors. Ai Iwane became interested in the song ‘Fukushima Ondo’, referring to the region that was destroyed in 2011. In her photographs, portraits emerge from the darkness, faces are projected onto sugar plants and captured. The memory of ancestors dances alongside the inhabitants, close to the moving lava. The artist presents a history of uprootedness and persistent links and brings these moments together through images of the evacuation zones in Fukushima or of the Issei cemeteries for first generation immigrants, now abandoned.

These photographs were taken on a Kodak Cirkut, a camera often used by Japanese immigrants to capture family occasions and funerals, according to the press release from her exhibition at the Kana Kawanishi Gallery. The series was exhibited in 2018 at Kanzan Gallery in Tokyo and was awarded the 44th Ihei Kimura Photography Award in 2019. The project also led to the production of a film, entitled Bon-Uta, A Song from Home.

Kipuka (2018), by Ai Iwane, is published by Seigensha Art Publishing, Inc.