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This paper investigates the popularity of hula in contemporary Japanese society in order to understand how Native Hawaiian images and traditions play a role in constructing the image of a ‘paradise’ in Hawai`i. By drawing on the personal experience of the author as a participant observer in hula lessons and performance in Tokyo, it argues that aiming for the sense of cultural authenticity is integral to the Japanese practitioners’ attraction to hula. It also shows how Native Hawaiian hula teachers and performers skillfully appropriate the Japanese desire to discover an ‘authentic’ Hawai`i for their cultural as well as personal gain. Today’s Japanese discourse of ‘Hawai`i as paradise’ derives from the contemporary socio-cultural context of a Japanese society that longs for the authentic culture of the indigenous ‘other’ as well as from the shrewd use of that longing by the ‘other.’ [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

During what was perhaps the first transnational hula tour of North America and Europe between 1892 and 1896, hula performers received sustained attention during a critical period when Hawai‘i's political status and proposed annexation by the US was a topic of national and international debate. Given Hawai‘i's subordinate economic and political status even prior to formal colonisation in 1898, hula operated as a form of colonial culture that became a part of mass, racialised entertainment on the rise in Europe and the US. While little known today, hula dancers who were previously members of the royal Hawaiian court circulated through international expositions, vaudeville theatres, dime museums and café-concerts. This gendered and sexualised colonial exhibition of hula associated Hawai‘i with the eroticised bodies and movements of women. However, late-19th-century Euro-American circuits also systematised opportunities for non-chiefly Hawaiian women to perform gendered cultural knowledge, travel and work. To illuminate the ambivalent character of transnational hula, as both colonial culture and opportunity for women performers, this paper traces the experiences of one member of the troupe: Kini Kapahu (also known as ‘Jennie Wilson’), previously a court dancer and later known as Hawai‘i's ‘first lady’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Using the Hawaiian hula tradition as a case study, this article explores archival institutionalization of knowledge and contents necessary for performance. The fact that the performance skills of hula remained in continuous practice is what allowed a successful revival in the late 20th century of poetic repertoire that had become entombed in archival sources by the end of the 19th century. I consider the role of archives as a form of memory, particularly in the context of colonized peoples, and advocate for performers to determine how the archived repertoire would be staged again in ways that address contemporary rather than past circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explores the vernacular history of the poetry of modern Hawaiian Hula. History of cultural resilience and resistance to assimilation; Conceptualization of social history; Integration of vernacular poetic texts and practices of enactment; Structural organization of modern Hula.

Focuses on the conservation of the national culture of indigenous people focusing on hula practices in Hawaii. Meaning of colonialism to Native Hawaiians; Relationship between Native Hawaiians and the land; Protest of Hawaiians to the Senate Bill 8; Legal protection for gathering rights; Denial of the existence of Native Hawaiians as a distinct people.

Describes the history of the theater in Hawaii before 1900. Suppression of the native's celebration of ceremonial hulas and religious incantations by missionaries; Development of amateur and professional theatrical activity in Honolulu; Discussion of the aspects of theatrical activity during the time.