Spirit of Aloha | Articles | Under the Hula Moon | November/December 2007

Under the Hula Moon
By: JOCELYN FUJII

SOLACE AND SHELTER

PHOTO: MIKE WAGGONER

Just as the high-surf season breaks, John Clark comes to the rescue. He’s a former lifeguard, retired deputy fire chief and longtime guru of beaches. He’s a busy man, having saved many lives in his career—not only in official rescues, but as author of the series of Beaches books that cover O‘ahu, Maui County, the Big Island, Kaua‘i and Ni‘ihau, plus Hawai‘i’s Best Beaches and Hawai‘i Place Names: Shores, Beaches, and Surf Sites. These books are the bibles of beachgoers, filled with painstakingly researched background on everything from the origins of place names to arcane details of the surf, sand, channels, reefs, erosion, fishing sites, cultural background, access and all things beach-related.

I know, because I have all of his books, and have cited them often in my writing. I have also purchased them for friends and used them for 30 years as trusty guides to my own beach adventures.

Now Clark rides the waves again with a new book, Guar­dian of the Sea: Jizo in Hawai‘i, an enlightening tome about the Buddhist guardian of children and travelers. The book, says Clark, is the fulfillment of a personal quest that has en­gaged him since 1972, when he saw a wooden beach obelisk at O‘ahu’s Blowhole at Halona Point. He learned that the obelisk was a warning sign erected as a public service by the Honolulu Japanese Casting Club after one of its ‘ulua fishermen drowned at the spot. The group set up more than 50 of these warning signs along O‘ahu shorelines, of which only two, on the south shore, remain. As Clark recounts in his book, the fishermen also purchased a granite statue of Jizo from Japan and installed it, only to see it destroyed by vandals.

The lava monument that replaced it, near the Blowhole on the south shore, contains the likeness of Jizo that initiated Clark’s decades-long quest. “I haven’t visited every single Jizo in Hawai‘i, but I’ve visited a good number of them,” he says. “I would say that there are about 300 statues of Jizo on all the islands, in temples, museums and graveyards. People also have them in their homes.” In Japan, he adds, Jizo and other Buddhist statues invariably appear in temples or on temple grounds, but only in Hawai‘i is Jizo placed at remote outdoor sites. And only on O‘ahu have Jizo statues been positioned at the shoreline as warnings in places where fishermen have died. Relatively unknown is that Buddhists also consider Jizo the guardian of the ocean.

“Jizo was placed in a remote area in seven places that I know of,” he told me.

“The Casting Club did the one at Blow­hole, but the other six were done by others. Shoreline Jizos are unique to O‘ahu.” The first Jizo was installed in Mokulë‘ia in 1913, says Clark, because the issei—first-generation Japa­nese in Hawai‘i—were drowning in the high winter surf as they fished for ‘ulua.

Clark has an uncanny instinct for uncovering the story be­hind the story, and he likes to unveil little-known or unpublish­ed facts. His book takes us on an islandwide, cross-cultural journey into the Jizo culture of early Japanese immigrants—and the bonds, re­sil­i­ence and traditions they brought to Hawai‘i.

“Villagers who lived on the ocean and those who made their living from the sea looked to him [Jizo] for protection, and it was this knowledge that the issei brought with them to Hawai‘i,” writes Clark.

The ocean is a teacher and provider, but it is also a destroyer. Clark, in his book, again reveals his immense humanity and passion for saving lives. This time especially, those qualities are equaled by his storytelling skills and his deep respect for Hawai‘i’s traditions.

Under the Hula Moon Archives