Kaua‘i is in for a treat during today’s lunch hour, as a very popular Japanese singer will give a free performance at Kukui Grove Center scheduled for 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Fumiko Utagawa will perform Japanese folk songs, or
Kaua‘i is in for a treat during today’s lunch hour, as a very popular Japanese singer will give a free performance at Kukui Grove Center scheduled for 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Fumiko Utagawa will perform Japanese folk songs, or enka, and dances. She is also to sing “Hole Hole Bushi,” created by Japanese immigrants who worked in the sugar cane fields and plantations. Each verse has a mixture of Hawaiian, Japanese and English words, all telling of the Japanese toil in the fields, their families back in Japan and their cultural legacy.
Performing with Utagawa is a dance troupe led by masters of dance (kangen-ryu) Sakon Sugaoka and her daughter Ukon Sugaoka of Yamagata Prefecture, Japan. Oshima Island, in Yamagata, are sister cities.
The Sugaokas first visited Kaua‘i in the 1980s through a trip organized by the Kaua‘i Japanese Cultural Society, and fell in love with the island, a language translator told The Garden Island. Mrs. Toshiko Michioka told The Garden Island that she has helped this group organize five previous cultural exchanges and dance tours to Kaua‘i since the early 1990s.
“She’s been saying she wants to bring a group here, so she got my mom to help; it’s like her dream to do this,” said Debra Matsumoto, Michioka’s daughter.
The dancers performed Wednesday morning at Samuel Mahelona Hospital in Kapa‘a, for members of the Kapa‘a Seniors Center and Kapa‘a Hongwanji, clients of the Association for Retarded Citizens and Friendship House, and the long-term care patients of Mahelona Hospital. With them the dancers brought boxes of gifts for the audience, like cassette tapes, paper fans, decorative ornaments and wooden toys. They bring gifts on all their goodwill tours, Matsumoto said. They also performed Wednesday afternoon at Wilcox Hospital.
