Rehearsing Bon with Sessue Hayakawa

“Namu Amida Butsu.  Namu Amida Butsu. Namu Amida Butsu.  Have Fun!” 

With this prayer begins the Bon Odori rehearsal.

The teacher and her apprentices bow and step up on the raised platform, or yagura, in the center of the San Jose Buddhist Temple Betsuin’s gym.  Their faces are relaxed.  The youngest children encircle the platform, and concentric rings of dancers wait expectantly, men and women, teenagers and retirees.

My yukata, towel, fan, clappers, and obi await evenings of July 9 and 10.

“We’ll begin with Shinshu Ondo.”  The taped music starts up.  Shaking wooden clappers in rhythm, we move counterclockwise around the platform, watching and imitating the expressive hand gestures of the dancers on the platform or the experienced one ahead of us.  For one and a quarter hours we practice a total of fifteen different dances.  We repeat ones that are new or complicated. Some dances require a fan, others the clappers or a towel, and we take a break to retrieve the correct item.   After the first hour, I’m tired and sweaty and step outside with a cold drink and a cookie from the table in the lobby.

The practice session closes with the prayer, “Namu Amida Butsu.  Namu Amida Butsu. Namu Amida Butsu." The priest observes "The group is improving. Remember, if you don’t worry about your performance, the group will do well.”   He elaborates, “…it is not intended to be a show, but something to be done. There can be joy in watching, but that same joy does not exist in the act of being watched. Being watched is the ego at work and the antithesis of sharing the joy and doing it together.”  I have so much to learn.

Bon Odori began in 8th Century Japan with Odori Nembutsu, Buddhist chants and dances celebrating the joy of living and honoring departed loved ones at mid-summer. A thousand years later, the newly restored Meiji Emperor banned bon dancing. It was thought to encourage immoral behavior among youth.  Bon Odori resumed in the Taisho era before World War I.  Buddhist ministers brought it to Hawaii in 1905, and to Buddhist temples in California, Washington and Canada in the 1930s. In the internment camps of World War II, Japanese Americans celebrated Obon.  After the war, in 1947, a Buddhist minister and his wife revived the festival dances in Watsonville, south of San Jose.

So that is why the Japanese American community is here. Why am I? 

I’ve wanted to dance bon odori since watching a Japanese television series Kinpachi Sensei, about a high school teacher and his students. I was riveted by the students’ performing the fisherman’s dance,  Soran. I didn’t know that this was bon odori, but I wanted to do it.

I am dancing for my father.  I am celebrating something he taught me.   He couldn't accept and wasn't accepted by his own tribe, so he was curious about others. He didn’t always feel comfortable in his skin, and so he sometimes tried on other people’s.  He made it seem like high adventure.  

I follow his boundary breaking steps.  There is always so much more to learn.  My father taught me a little about Zen Buddhism when he edited the translation of Sessue Hayakawa's autobiography in 1960.  Only in the last decade have I learned of the numerous other forms of Buddhism.  I had no idea of Hayakawa's  success in Hollywood 1910-1930, or the California bred anti-Asian racism which limited it, or the equanimity with which he faced these reversals of fortune.

I find connections and follow them. Studying Japanese history at DeAnza, I read about the Ee Ja Nai Ka phenomena of 1867. Unrest among poor farmers took the form of dancing jubiliantly through the streets, shouting “Ee Ja Nai Ka!” or “What ever! ” after religious amulets had rained from the heavens.  I thought, ‘What a wonderful way to revolt! Dancing!”  (You can get some idea of it from a film version.)

At reheasal in the Betsuin gym, the list of dances we’re to learn hangs from the balcony. I see Ee Ja Nai Ka. This song could not have been brought to Hawaii or California by the Isei pioneers, because at the time of their emigraton, dancing had been outlawed.  Rather, the third generation Japanese-American activist, PJ Hirabiyashi, leader of San Jose Taiko, composed it. It’s become a staple of Obon festivals throughout the country.

Thank you, cher papa, I hope this dance is a good match to your rebellious spirit and Hayakawa's perserverence.