[ RELIGION ]
The Kaneohe Higashi Hongwanji Mission will celebrate its 80th anniversary this month. Above, the Rev. Takeo Maeda will choose Buddhist names for three congregation members. Below, paintings by Buddhist artist John Dumas will be among those on display as part of the celebration.
The Kaneohe Higashi Hongwanji
marks its 80th anniversary with
an artistic and spiritual celebration
It's a double anniversary for Kaneohe Higashi Hongwanji Mission this month, and members have invited the Windward community, fellow Buddhists and the art world to share a public celebration.
There will also be some personal, spiritual moments as Buddhist names are bestowed on three members of the congregation to confirm their choice to practice Buddha's teaching.
A free exhibition of Buddhist art will be open to the public from noon to 5 p.m. July 31 and 9 a.m. to noon Aug. 1 in the social hall at 45-520 Keaahala Road.
The show-opening reception for the artists from 6 to 8 p.m. July 30 is also open to the public. John Dumas, of Honolulu, will show watercolors that interpret the colors of the Buddhist flag through island scenes in "Everything Buddhist." Calligraphy and traditional Buddha images are combined by Japanese artist Kohei Takagaki in his "Muryo-Doji, a Child of Immeasurableness" collection.
The show will also include a display on the life, poetry and calligraphy of a 20th-century quadriplegic woman, Hisako Nakamura, who is remembered as attaining the heart of Buddhism despite a painful life of disability.
It's a double anniversary for the small congregation.
It's been 80 years since a group of Japanese immigrants organized a Buddhist Club in Kaneohe not far from the current temple site. In its earliest days, a minister from Honolulu had to make the long jaunt down old Pali Road for services.
It is also the 40th anniversary of the "new" temple's completion. Built by members in 1964 to replace termite-eaten wooden structures, it is a classic island-style building of high-ceiling, hollow-tile walls set with decorative patterns, topped by a corrugated metal roof.
The roof is painted bright blue, a testimony to the refurbishing efforts by members preparing for events that will draw about 70 people from the denomination in Japan, as well as children and grandchildren of past members who have moved or drifted away from temple practices.
The anniversary services at 1 p.m. July 31 and 10 a.m. Aug. 1 are also open to the public. A highlight will be traditional Japanese Buddhist music by musicians on flutes and drums and a choir from temples in Nagoya, Japan.
The current successor to the 1924 minister who came on horseback from Honolulu to the Kaneohe "camp town" is the Rev. Takeo Maeda, 27, who travels in the other direction to surf the south swells off Diamond Head. Maeda is a third-generation Higashi Hongwanji priest who earned a master's degree in Indian Buddhism at Otani University in Kyoto.
He conducts a free weekly study session on Buddhism at 6:30 p.m. Thursdays that is open to the public.
Maeda will choose the new Buddhist names for James Dote, Gladys Sakata and John Dumas. The names are intended to signify "the wishes, hopes and aspirations" of a person who practices Buddhist principles, he said. The confirmation ceremony July 31 will include shaving a lock of hair from each person, symbolizing the practice of monks shaving their heads.
Assuming a new name "is a declaration of intention and responsibility," Maeda said. It distinguishes Higashi Hongwanji from some other sects in which a Buddhist name is given after a person's death. "My father named me Ken-Yu, Chinese characters that signify a person who wants to be a bodhisattva," which is a being who seeks the enlightened state of Buddha and helps others to do so.
The names are taken from the Larger Sutra, which is the basis of the Jodo Shinshu sect. "It teaches that anyone can be saved by Amida Buddha," he said. "Despite your failings, you can become a bodhisattva."
About 40 people regularly attend services these days, and many of them remember the 1964 dedication of the "new" building. Board Chairwoman Mary Matsuda has unique memories. She literally grew up in the temple as one of four children of the Rev. Nobuo Matsumoto, minister from 1952 to 1980. He spearheaded the construction, and his handicraft is seen in the seals on the doors.
She remembers her father's style in performing the ceremony of blessing a home, a business or a new building, which is a Hawaii tradition.
"As he talked about the new house, he would ask people to be grateful for their lifestyle and for all the past life of the place, down to the grass that formerly grew there and the bugs that worked in the soil," she said.
"The idea of a blessing being a way to drive out bad luck or demons, that is not a Jodo Shinshu belief. We don't say we have magical powers to heal, or power over nature."
Her father's message at a house-blessing conveyed an elementary tenet of the Higashi Hongwanji belief, she said. "We strive to realize the immensity of Buddha's compassion."
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Special bon dance celebrates
Kahuku Hongwanji centennialPeople who join the Kahuku Hongwanji Temple bon dance next Saturday will see red.
Mission members sewed and sold 180 red-and-white hapi coats for community participants to mark the 100th year of their traditional Buddhist celebration honoring the dead.
Temple president Ted Kunemitsu said there was no question about what color to use in the hometown, which decked the high school halls, not to mention fences and front porches, with the school colors last year to celebrate the Red Raiders' OIA football championship.
Three classes of Kahuku High alumni -- '56, '57 and '58 -- adopted the Hongwanji centennial as a class community service project, helping to refurbish the old wooden temple located across from Kahuku Sugar Mill. It's on an unnamed road leading past Giovanni's shrimp van.
"The yagura was in not-so-good shape, and they built us a new one," Kunemitsu said. The towerlike stage for bon dance musicians will see action from 7:30 to 10 p.m. next Saturday. Musicians and dancers from the Ewa Fukushima Group and an Okinawan troupe from the Jikoen Temple in Kalihi will enliven the special bon dance.
The alumni groups will operate food booths where barbecued meat, stew plate lunches, chili, spam musubi, hot dogs and cold drinks will be sold.
"We expect younger generations to come back and celebrate," said Kunemitsu, a retired Kahuku teacher.
He said the alumni participation energized the special celebration. The temple, which had more than 240 members during plantation days, now has 36 members. It shares the services of the Rev. Kevin Kuniyuki, Wahiawa Hongwanji Temple minister.
"In the old days, we had a carnival midway," he recalled.
The Buddhist mission was founded in 1904 by first-generation Japanese contract workers. It was one of the first on Oahu and, like the others, thrived during the plantation heyday. World War II forced Japanese ministers to leave and Buddhist temples to close.
The current building -- "we call it the new temple" -- was built in 1949, as was the adjoining building where a Japanese-language school operated until the 1980s. The buildings have been used as retreat houses for visiting Buddhists, he said.
The 100th anniversary will be celebrated with temple ceremonies on Nov. 14.
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