For nine summer weekends, Harold Hishinuma and his Honolulu Fukushima Bon Dance Club don happi coats, pound the taiko drums and circle the yagura tower at temples across the island.

If he were in Japan, it would be different. There, where the annual bon odori, or dance, tradition started centuries ago, it's a one-weekend-only event in August.

"We spread it out in Hawai'i," the Kaimuki resident said with a chuckle. "If all temples made bon dances the same night, we could only do the Honpa Hongwanji."

And in Hawai'i, the events are growing in popularity. They are a chance for Hawai'i's Japanese-Americans to drag their kimono out of the closet and keep a tenuous connection to old-country roots, although the resulting plant seems to be a different species.

The largest bon dance, at the parking-challenged Honpa Hongwanji on Pali Highway, draws diverse crowds of up to 1,000 on each of its two consecutive nights.

"Japanese people, including me, would be surprised to hear bon dancing is so popular in Hawai'i," said Consul General of Japan Shigeo Iwatani.

In Japan, bon odori is a community carnival-type affair put on by business groups such as chambers of commerce. Hawai'i's temple events seem to have a more overt religious flavor.

Rooted in Buddhist tradition, bon dances are ushered in by obon services, a time to honor the dead.

"Here, obon services have been huge," said the Rev. Al Bloom, a retired religion professor and member of Honpa Hongwanji.

At one time in Hawai'i, obon services drew so many attendees that temples spread the services over the course of a week, Bloom said. That's in sharp contrast to Japan, where Buddhist priests go from house to house or to a graveyard to hold services for a family's ancestors.

In Japan, "only really religious people join (in temple services), though many people go to the graveyard to visit your own family," said Iwatani. He added that while he has yet to experience his first Island bon dance since starting his appointment seven months ago, he's heard of the phenomenon in the run up to obon season.

PLANTATION ROOTS

Hawai'i's bon dances are cultural flies in amber. If someone from Japan were to spy on Hawai'i's bon dances of today, "they'd feel that they go back years," said the Rev. Shugen Komagata, of the Soto Mission.

Christine Yano, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa who wrote her master's thesis on bon dancing in Hawai'i, explains how our bon odori became a sort of museum piece.

"Here is an immigrant population transported into a totally different context," Yano said. "They bring the traditions they know, and want to re-create something that they had at home."

Besides New Year's, the most important celebration of the year for the Japanese is obon season, she said: "It stands to reason that immigrants would cling to the big yearly events from the home country."

Traditionally, obon is when ancestor-revering Japanese return home for reunions and visits to family graves.

Early Japanese-American immigrants kept up the practices. Our bon dance "gets put in a museum," so to speak, while in Japan things are changing at a rapid pace, Yano said.

"Immigrants want to keep it the same," Yano said. "They have a real reason — it's tied to their cultural identity. ... They can surround themselves with an ethnic enclave, but outside that, it's a whole other world. They are carving out a space."

As ethnic centers for Hawai'i's Japanese, Buddhist temples are the logical location for bon dances.

"They didn't need that siting in Japan," Yano said. "When you go to bon dances in Japan, they're often not held at temples, but at market centers or parking lots. It's so much looser in Japan."

Hawai'i's pre-war bon dances were wild and wooly affairs, Yano learned by talking to old-timers who spoke of "free-wheeling" secular events that included other ethnic groups and went into the wee hours.

"A lot of Japanese alcohol was drunk — that was the point!" she said. "There was very little talk of religion."

The 78-year-old Hishinuma remembers as a teenager how bon dances were suddenly suspended after the attack on Pearl Harbor. He also watched as the events slowly resumed and grew into what they are today — Hawai'i's lantern-lit summer spectacle, the most public face of a Japanese cultural and religious celebration.

Once they grew into such public events, especially after the war, however, a process of sanitization began; the immigrant group cleaned up its image.

"When there was no audience, you're not so worried," Yano said, then laughed. "I think it happens all the time."

EFFECT OF THE WAR

Yano studied the effects of World War II on bon dancing. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, all things Japanese became suspect. In Honolulu, people were wary of publicly expressing their Japanese-American identity, Yano said, though signs of patriotism perhaps helped stave off criticism. Even as late as the 1980s, one Buddhist temple on Maui cloaked its yagura in an American flag.

And perhaps to create an arm of protection, bon dancing after WWII became even more associated with Buddhist temples, starting on Neighbor Islands first.

"Bon dances once again became a part of life in Hawai'i after WWII, but not without cautious regard for the opinions of the American public," Yano wrote in her thesis in 1984. "As early as 1946, a bon dance was organized in Hanapepe, Kaua'i; musicians were brought from Honolulu and prizes for dancers were donated by merchants.

"However, in Honolulu in the same year, newspaper headlines reveal, 'Bon dance revival squelched.' Objections to the dance were raised by the Hawaii Federation of the United Young Buddhist Association and Club 100. By 1950, Honolulu newspaper headlines announced, 'Bon dancing here again: several communities joining in festivals.' "

After the war, the temple bond was sealed, she found, and groups began coordinating among themselves to prevent overlapping.

This allows different temples to support each other, seeding the bon dances with Buddhists from other temples, said retired religion professor Bloom.

This stretched the season from one weekend to about two months, allowing people — often many of the same roving bands of bon dancers — to hit each one. Bon dances became standard two-night events, ending by about midnight — only this time, with dress codes.

"According to one musician, organizers patrolled the grounds at some bon dances forcing those not properly dressed or behaving disruptively to leave," she wrote.

MODERN INFLUENCES

Since her research in the 1980s, Yano suspects bon dances have become even more popular, though she can't quite account for it.

"I'm always surprised at what I see," she said. "... I'd love to do a restudy of this."

The consul general has a theory on why bon dancing is so popular here: It's so close to hula, Iwatani posits, with hand movements and gestures telling a story, often a traditional one.

"Bon dance in Japan has more varieties these days," Iwatani said. "Younger generations prefer more lively dance, with some element of rock music."

He's learning that as Hawai'i's Japanese-Americans age, they yearn to return to their roots.

"There's a tendency to become more attached to the origin of their blood," he said, "and more interested in Japanese culture."