LAWA‘I — With record donations over the past two months, a 23-year project to build a Hall of Compassion is nearly complete. It took two months of construction, more than 100 volunteers and international support to achieve this feat at
LAWA‘I — With record donations over the past two months, a 23-year project to build a Hall of Compassion is nearly complete. It took two months of construction, more than 100 volunteers and international support to achieve this feat at the Lawa‘i International Center.
Using 13th century carving techniques, a replica of a Japanese building with a bowed roof accented with hand-carved wood designs was erected. It was designed to be flexible and durable. Using wood joinery, it is naturally fitted without nails —
described as “balance, fluidity and grace to transform time and space,” according to Lynn Muramoto, project leader and president of Lawa‘i International Center.
“The community has indeed pulled together and accomplished another miracle,” Muramoto said.
Considered a sacred valley to Kaua‘i royalty, the 32-acre site was once the location of a heiau, and more recently held a Taoist temple, a Shinto shrine and a Shingon Buddhist temple.
At the turn of the 20th century, Japanese immigrant teenagers working at a local Pineapple cannery were attracted to the energy of the land and built an 88 shrine path on a hillside. It was a scaled replica of the 1,000 shrine path in Shikoku, Japan.
“From 1904 to the late 1940s people would walk to this place from around the island to be healed,” Muramoto said. “Nature has provided places of comfort around the world and this is one of them.”
The Japanese community held community events on this site for more than 40 years, and around eight families maintained the hillside until the pineapple cannery closed in the late 1960s.
Sharing the site
with the world
The land was privately owned when a group formed to clear the area of four decades of overgrowth. They discovered a crumbling rock wall and staircase, a community building that was infested with termites, and a small disintegrated temple to Quan Yin, Buddha of Compassion that would be cremated, Muramoto said.
Kay Hill of Hanapepe said she remembers grandma Takano Nonaka visiting the area religiously for 60 years. After visiting herself three years ago, Hill said she felt a connection through Nonaka and joined the effort.
“For me it was more like a place to come and reflect and just feel good about doing something important to the place and to myself,” Hill said. “The walk is beautiful and relaxing.”
Hill said the place means a lot to the aging community that knew the place as children. She brings groups from the Waimea Senior Center to visit and said it has been a worthwhile effort.
“They enjoy it,” she said. “Some of them walk the path and some of them just love to sit and watch.”
The effort took on a greater magnitude when Muramoto left her job as an elementary school teacher 23 years ago “to help this land and to fulfill this destiny.”
“We wanted to share the site with the world,” Muramoto said. “It is a place of benefit to all humanity with an indescribable something that is very natural and that permeates everything and everyone.”
Lawa‘i International Center
The nonprofit Lawa‘i International Center was founded about 14 years ago. An effort to build a condominium development was blocked by a County Council that agreed the site should be preserved, Muramoto said.
The initial $6 million price tag was negotiated down and the land was purchased for $250,000. It was paid for by donations.
The plan for the completed project began with the House of Peace on an earth mound that is considered the head of a turtle, with rock walls on either side as fins and the hillside as the shell.
“There is so much beauty and kindness in the world it is just overwhelming,” Muramoto said. “This is beyond maintaining a shrine or constructing a building. It is about the bigger picture of humanity.”
An international collaboration spurred a project with master architects and artisans from Taiwan and Japan, Muramoto said.
Master Yamamoto drew the architectural plans for the Hall of Compassion. He sent his student, Master Tohta Mizuguchi, to guide volunteers in the completion of the project Kaua‘i.
Yellow cedar wood was shipped from Long Ho Lumber in Vancouver, Canada to Taiwan, where pieces were hand carved, assembled and packed into three containers bound for Kaua‘i.
According to Muramoto, the apprenticeship of master artisans of wood joinery architecture has lived on for more than a millennium in Japan. Students live with their masters to learn a unique and timeless trade.
Long Ho has a generations-old relationship with master temple artisans that include Mizuguchi. He was sent to Kaua‘i as a rare favor to the owner of the lumber company, Muramoto said.
“This is the first time that this wood and this energy is coming to the United States,” she said.
Through interpreter Keiko Lansdell, Mizuguchi said he has participated in one other out-of-country temple project in China.
Building a house is wonderful, but Mizuguchi said a temple structure is on the map and is significant to people as a spiritual place in their lives. “So of course I am proud of my job in that way,” he added.
Overcoming barriers
Mizuguchi was present on island for two months to lead the volunteers in constructing the hall. A fellow artisan from Taiwan had to return before it was completed.
Mark Hubbard has volunteered with the project since the beginning. He said he overcame a language barrier as familiarity with tools and techniques improved. He said nonverbal communication improved and the interpreter eventually turned to painting and other chores.
“They catch on very fast,” Mizuguchi said.
The other barrier was tools. Mizuguchi brought his basic measuring and chiseling items. An extremely high-grade steel hand tools were also used, sharpened daily to shave edges to near mirror quality.
There are similar items at hardware stores, and Mizuguchi said volunteer carpenters presented some very useful items he had not seen in Japan.
The metric conversion was another challenge and the joinery had to be especially tight.
Cedar wood is not used in Japan, and is considered a cousin to their native Hinoki wood that is used to construct temples. Cedar allows expansion in moisture and shrinking in sunlight, Mizuguchi said.
In Japan the weather is more extreme with hot summers and snowy, cold winters. Mizuguchi said Kaua‘i’s weather is more stable and it should benefit the life of the cedar structure.
Mizuguchi worked every day of his two month stay except for Thanksgiving Day. Being from the countryside, he said he connected with the “wonderful, sweet people of Kaua‘i.”
Moe Siler, a member of the Koloa Jodo Mission, said he was reluctant to donate so much time to the project. After five minutes on-site, he said he ran home to get his tools.
“I’m the luckiest carpenter around,” Siler said. “It’s hard to even call it a job site. I just feel like I am part of something that is for everyone and it is really special.”
Siler recalls doing joinery work on homes and that it reminded him of his childhood. His grandmother brought him to see a Japanese tea garden near Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.
“I looked at the pagodas and thought about the high level of carpentry that put it all together,” he said. “It’s something that I’ve always wanted to do but never thought that I would.
Looking forward
There are around 300 temples in Hawai‘i, but Siler said he thinks highly of this one.
“I haven’t seen anything constructed to this degree,” he said. “The clear yellow cedar should last for centuries the way they went about this.”
The Rev. Kosen Ishikawa of Koloa Jodo Mission said he supports the project. The house consists of wood, and that emits warmth and kindness, he said.
“Wood is heartfelt and endures for many years,” he added.
The word temple is used to describe the structure, but Muramoto said it is important to emphasize the organic energy of the area and not to designate any particular set of beliefs to the project. She said the house is a place of meditation and would use a lotus blossom as a symbol of compassion.
The wood portion of the hall will be completed in early 2013. A natural sealant will be added to better protect the wood with ornate tile on the roof.
Now that the heavy construction is complete the site will return to its public access on the second and the last Sunday of each month.
The Center has raised $1,053,000 in cash and in-kind support, leaving $51,000 goal for the $1,104,000 price tag.
The project is in need of carpenters and handy-people to complete the detail work.
To join or donate call 639-4300, email LM@hawaii.rr.com or visit the website www.lawaicenter.org.
