The Iwanagas established the Japanese American tradition of bon-odori, or the ritual participatory dances that are now widely practiced in Buddhist temples. 

Rev. Yoshio Iwanaga was an immigrant Jodo Shinshu priest and his Nisei wife, Helen Chizu Okamoto Iwanaga, was a trained musician. Rev. Iwanaga emigrated to California from Japan in 1930 to teach Buddhist music and bon-odori to Buddhist Nisei youth. Helen Chizuko Iwanaga was a pioneer of Japanese American Buddhist music. She composed extensively and organized and conducted California temple choirs in Watsonville, Palo Alto, Oakland, and Mountain View, as well as Young Buddhist Association bands and orchestras. 

The Iwanagas created new dances using a vocabulary of folk-dance movements from the Japanese regions of immigrant communities’ origins, often set to Japanese commercial recordings. Helen Iwanaga accompanied Rev. Iwanaga on the piano as he taught and choreographed the dances. The dances were intentionally simple, each with a limited set of movements, designed to be performed over and over in unison by community members. The Iwanagas recast and rechoreographed traditional music and dance in ways that emphasized Buddhist meanings. They directed their work toward community participation, often with careful efforts to involve Buddhist youth.

Their creative work resulted in widespread Japanese American participation in bon-odori across California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. In 1942, the Iwanagas and their two children were incarcerated at Poston Internment Camp #2. Bon-odori was performed in most of the incarceration camps–a strong indication of how quickly it became important to Japanese American community life. Post-incarceration, the Iwanagas returned to the temple in Watsonville, California, where they continued to teach and to help reestablish the postwar network of Japanese American Buddhist temples. Their last major project, as directors of the Music and Recording Department of the Buddhist Churches of America, was to record a collection of Buddhist hymns (gatha), completed not long before Rev. Iwanaga died in 1950. Helen Iwanaga remained active in the temple as a musician for another fifty years. 

The Iwanagas created and established a uniquely Japanese American community practice that blurred the lines between research and creative work as culture bearers. They were profoundly directed toward the Japanese American Buddhist community. Their work together built a nascent Japanese practice into a Japanese American tradition that is now regarded as fundamentally important to community sustainability. The participatory community base to their bon-odori was carried forward in the 1970s as both a matter of cultural heritage and as a principle for Asian American presence. The Iwanagas’ dances are still performed by thousands of community members every summer. The Japanese American ‘tradition’ of bon-odori is a heritage practice that constantly grows as new bon-odori are composed and created.

To see some of the dances: 

Kiyama, Wynn. 2015. “Obon Dancing in America: Reverend Yoshio Iwanaga Photo Album.” Portland State University Library Digital Exhibits. https://exhibits.library.pdx.edu/exhibits/show/obondancing/overview.html

Wynn Kiyama has conducted extensive research on the Iwanagas, resulting in an extraordinary digital exhibit at Portland State University. Kiyama inherited the Iwanaga family photographs from researcher Linda Cummings Akiyama, and I suggest you ask him for photo permissions. Some photos of Helen Chizuko Iwanaga are here.

Deborah Wong