Jon Itomura, 61 stay da Executive Director of da Hawai‘i United Okinawa Association (HUOA) and Co-Founder of Hawai‘i Okinawa Creative Arts (HOCA), one organization dedicated to promoting creative or contemporary presentations of shishimai or Okinawan Lion Dance. He’s one busy Okinawan big-wig now, but back when he wuz one little kid growing up in Liliha on O‘ahu, he used to love just “playing hide-and-go-seek at night in the graveyard at O‘ahu Cemetary.” An’den as one teenager, dis Saint Louis High School, ’81 grad used to cruise with da boyz, his social club called Alliance. Dey liked 3 tings: Beating, Meeting, and Eating. Dey loved Beating oddah teams at basketball, Meeting da girls who wuz watching dem win, an’den Eating steaks at Sizzler’s with their newfound female fans. As Jon got mo’ older he would go college and do law for long time, but as one Uchinānchu [Okinawan person] he would always feel one longing for express his Okinawan-ness. Throughout his life he wuz constantly dabbling in karate, sanshin, eisā drumming, and dropping andāgī [Okinawan donuts]. But wuzn’t till one fateful trip to Okinawa in 1999 that he wen finally discover what wuz going become his life’s mission.

[Disclosure: My childrens have been part of Hawai‘i Okinawa Creative Arts since 2015.]

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Lee Tonouchi (LT): What village you from?

Jon Itomura (JI): My father’s side is Chatan. And my mother’s side is Ishikawa.

LT: What your ethnicities?

JI: 100% Okinawan.

LT: How you identify as?

JI: Local Uchinānchu.

LT: You remembah da first time you saw Okinawan lions, da performance kine, not da statue kine?

JI: Growing up I had never seen it. The first time was actually in Okinawa in 1999 at Gyokusendo Park or now it’s called Okinawa World. It was a contemporary performance.

LT: So seeing that inspired you?

JI: Yes. So in 2000, I was President of the Young Okinawans of Hawai‘i (YOH) and my Vice President was Valerie Schmidt. And since we were both together on the HUOA leadership tour, we thought that we would be the ones to revive YOH’s Haebaru shīshi [lion from the town of Miyahira, Haebaru], because no one was performing with that shīshi. And so upon coming back, we started performing in that shīshi for all of our YOH appearances at the various bon dances. Then slowly we started also being asked to perform at other events.

LT: How come you wen decide for start HOCA?

JI: I was researching shīshi in Hawai‘i and I was trying to get various village clubs to revive the use of their lions. It turned out that the Hawai‘i Okinawa Center in Waipi‘o had a Naha shīshi that no one knew about; it was just in storage! The center also had a Kin shīshi which was on display in the museum. I wanted to revive the spirit of these lions so that’s what led to the idea.

But Val Schmidt had decided to start having babies, so my [favorite] brother-in-law Eric Nitta came aboard as my partner and he and I established HOCA in 2012. Because we were using the three lions and because we knew we were going to receive a donation of a lion from Ryukyukoku Matsuri Daiko in Okinawa and a lion from Requios, another contemporary eisā group in Haneji near Nago, we thought we needed to create a group so that we could make use of the lions that we were starting to collect and care for.

And we decided that by naming the group, Hawai‘i Okinawa CREATIVE Arts, we felt it was making a statement that this group would provide a forum for creativity that will support not only traditional forms and traditional education about traditional performances, but it would also allow contemporary performances.

LT: Prior to starting HOCA you had any formal Okinawan lion dance training? Or you just wen watch YouTube videos?

JI: [Laughing] When I first started my research, there was no YouTube!!! I would try to collect videotapes, VHS tapes from Okinawa of the annual All Okinawa Shishimai Festivals that were held in Gushikawa, which is now part of Uruma. So, I would watch and see the various villages and towns, doing their traditional shishimai on videotape.

LT: I wuz wondering, “shishimai” stay one Japanese word yeah, referring to lion dance. But I wuz tinking, since we promoting Okinawan lion dance, den shouldn’t we be using da Okinawan word? But I dunno da Okinawan word, so I wen go ask “Da Okinawan Hammah” Brandon Ufugusuku Ing and he said him and da Okinawan cultural group Ukwanshin Kabudan guys, dey tell shīsa mōi.

JI: I use shishimai only because colloquially that is what has been used in Okinawa. And so at least in my experience, I have never come across any town or village that has referred to it as anything other than shishimai. I would consider changing it if I can confirm with villages, but I don’t know why historically how that came about in terms of language. Maybe the Okinawan dialects in Okinawa are so different when it comes to something that specific that [the Japanese word] shishimai was the easiest word for all of Okinawa to use.

LT: Who you grateful to in your Okinawan lion dance journey?

JI: I would start by thanking Valerie Schmidt for volunteering to be my lion partner for those first several years. And then Eric Nitta for helping me start HOCA. Eric Nitta is not Okinawan by ethnicity, but through his involvement with various Okinawan organizations, not only HOCA, but also with the YOH and with Hui Maka‘ala, he’s really been a true Okinawan at heart.

LT: Most people in Hawai‘i familiar with Chinese lions cuz we see those all da time, but planny people stay surprise for find out us Okinawans get our own lions too. You can try explain da difference?

JI: So there’s at least two different types of Chinese lions. There’s the northern Chinese lion and the southern Chinese lion. The majority of Hawai‘i people are familiar with the southern with the bigger head, the flapping eyes, and the sheet that covers the partner.

The northern Chinese lion is much closer to the Okinawan style lion where both performers are actually getting into the costume and really connected with each other and can’t interchange like the southern Chinese lion.

Both the northern and southern Chinese lion, they look a little different, but their heads are constructed in a way that you typically hold and control the head by holding your hands close to your head and kind of doing more vertical movements and controlling the mouth and everything else with your fingers with wires and strings.

LT: What about da heaviness?

JI: The Okinawan lion head is traditionally made of wood. More contemporary Okinawan lions might be made of fiberglass or foam, but traditional ones are made of heavy wood. The performers have to hold the lion heads out with outstretched arms away from their heads and not close to their ears. So the performance with the Okinawan lion head is much more difficult because of the extension of your arms and with the traditional lion heads being much heavier than the bamboo and paper Chinese lion heads. A typical Okinawan adult lion head could probably range anywhere from 20 to 30 pounds.

Okinawan lions weigh more overall. A lot of the weight comes from the entire costume. Some of the older ones use a small rope netting, which makes it heavy. And then you have all different types of materials used for the fur, which could include anything from yarn, to raffia to strands of rope.

LT: What about differences with da Japanese lion?

JI: One of the main things I’ve observed with the Japanese lion is there is only one type of Japanese lion. Usually it’s a red head with a green covering more closer to the southern Chinese style. And another difference is with the Japanese shishimai, you could have one performer or as many as six performers under the lion. Whereas in Okinawa, it’s always two performers.

It’s interesting that the Japanese ones all look alike, because in Okinawa usually there are no two lions that look alike. Sometimes in a single village, you may have two that look alike, but many times, even within the same village, if it’s different artists that made the lions at different times in the village’s history, they’ll look different. And the point being that they always have to have one lion to protect the village. If there’s two lions, then maybe one lion will be allowed to go and participate with demonstrations or festivals around Okinawa. But if the village only has one lion, then they would not allow that lion to ever leave the village because that lion serves as protection.

LT: You eva got flak from people in Okinawa saying you breaking tradition by accepting money and doing Okinawan lion dance for anykine occasions?

JI: Right, in Okinawa all the lions do not accept money. However, the tradition of the performance varies from village to village, town to town, city to city. Some lions don’t engage the audience, others do. Some are very strict about which way the lion faces during its performance and others are not. Therefore, there’s no one “correct” way to do the lion in Okinawa.

And yes, in Okinawa no traditional lion appears for any type of private party like how we do in Hawai‘i, whether it’s a graduation, birthday, wedding, Kanreki, Yakudoshi, or any of those types of celebrations. That’s not the purpose for the lion. In Okinawa they reserve it for festivals and not even Obon festival. The lion does not come out during Obon like how we do here. Obon is to honor your ancestors and the return of your ancestors. So in Okinawa, the lion really is to bring luck and good fortune as well as protection. Jūguya is one of the more famous times where lions come out, which is the harvest moon festival in October.

LT: So you break with tradition cuz...

JI: So in Hawai‘i, one of the reasons again for having our name be HOCA is to provide a venue that would allow for creativity with the mission of bringing more exposure to elements of Okinawan culture. That would involve allowing our lions to perform at various events, which would include private parties, Obon celebrations, and our annual Okinawan Festival. Because what we’re trying to do is provide people with an experience that maybe they’re not familiar with, like you mentioned, people may not know there’s an Okinawan lion.

LT: HOCA get some pretty old lion heads. You not sked you going broke ’em?

JI: Our oldest lion was made in the 1920s by one of the Issei who came from Haebaru. But it is well made and we’ve been able to keep it maintained. Even the Miyahira Haebaru group that came down with the successor lions, they feel that we are keeping the lion’s spirit alive by continuing to perform with it.

LT: You wen talk about how different villages in Okinawa all get their own signature elements. So what’s HOCA’s trademark?

JI: Something I have always planned to do and have not yet completed is taking what we learned when we went to Okinawa from each village and taking a particular move from each village and consolidating it into what we would call a traditional shishimai performance and tying together the different villages into a single performance. So if anybody were to watch our performance, they would recognize that certain moves came from their village.

LT: Like one Okinawan mix plate! Would be like all da Okinawan lion dances, all in one dance!

JI: Exactly!

 

© 2025 Lee A. Tonouchi