FL MORRIS / FMORRIS@STARBULLETIN.COM Drummer Grant Higa keeps a beat for practicing bon dancers at the Jikoen Hongwanji Mission.

Generations pass down
bon dance festival
memories

Eighty-eight-year-old Agnes Kameko Higa still has the graceful moves and lightness of foot of a polished bon dancer, outshining those decades younger than she.

Just a few weeks ago, Higa taught the young Hawaii Eisa Shinyuu Kai dance club a new bon dance, an easy task since "I never forgot it," she said.

There are 20 different kinds of dances, which she said she can remember "because I love them. I think right now I'm the only one -- very few people know all these things."

Higa and others will follow the Buddhist tradition of honoring dead ancestors beginning next week with bon dance festivals all summer long, marked by the heavy beating of drums and lighting of lanterns.

The lanterns' glow symbolically guides the way home for the spirits of the dead to visit their families.

The Hawaii Eisa Shinyuu Kai dance club is one of dozens of groups that started practicing a few months ago to be ready for weekends of celebrating late into the night.

Higa lends more than 50 years of expertise to the Shinyuu Kai club, which uses the meeting hall at the Jikoen Hongwanji Mission in Kalihi for practice. For those 50 years, she taught alongside her now deceased husband, Henry Masatada Higa, founder of the Higa Masatada Minyo Koten Club, one of the first Okinawan clubs in Honolulu.

She considers herself fortunate to have a happy life and to be free of the aches and pains that usually accompany aging. She even has to ask, "Does arthritis hurt?" because she has never had it.

Newcomers to bon dancing might not perform with the precision of experienced ones, but "it's good enough. Let them do it as long as they do it."

Nowadays, "I see Hawaiian, haole and Filipino" and other non-Japanese people joining in the bon dancing, "and I'm so glad," Higa said.

Club President Melissa Sakauye, watching the revolving circles of dancers at a Sunday practice session, said the 20 to 30 regular members include a mixture of different ages and ethnic groups.

Often, a child's first bon dance is one in which he is carried in his mother's arms while she joins in the moving circle. A common sight is to see siblings of graduated heights following right behind her, mimicking her movements.

Sakauye started dancing 15 years ago when she was about 9. "My grandparents dragged me along with them," she said, but soon she found -- as so many others have -- that the atmosphere created by the beating drums, live music and "everybody having a good time" made bon dancing something she wanted to join.

Sakauye said that attending a bon dance every weekend is quite a commitment for families with young children, but everyone helps dress the youngsters in kimonos or traditional costume. During obon, or lantern festival, season, she recalled, "Every Friday and Saturday, we'd rush to come home and go to bon dance."

She added that it's easy for everyone to learn because the moves for each dance are repeated in every verse: "If you make a mistake, nobody cares."

Vice President Leanne Eguchi said "the live drums make a big difference." It was her daughter, Tori, now 14, who cajoled her into going to the dances two years ago. "She likes the action," Eguchi said.

Many parents come out to support their children, usually by sitting and watching, then become hooked themselves. Although Eguchi started dancing when she was 5 with her parents and grandmother, her participation dropped to just an occasional thing until her daughter became interested.

Eguchi has noticed more high school students coming out in the past few years. Her daughter has asked her friends to come with her, as do other kids, and "it's nice to see."

It's also "nice for the old folks to see. They're so happy to see younger ones coming out, and see their interest in the culture," Eguchi added.

Tori Eguchi always wanted to be a drummer, and started playing the smaller drum, the shime taiko, last season. As a percussion player in the Moanalua Middle School band, she found it "easy for me" to learn, but no one cares if someone misses a beat.

Maurice Tokuda is also a bon dance drummer and percussionist in the Moanalua High School band. He joined the club last year to learn more about the culture and develop more of an "understanding of who you are, your background," he said.

Bon dancing is "really fun; it energizes you. The taiko drum is like your heartbeat; you get into a groove. It's fun to go all out," Tokuda said.