Japanese Immigrant Gender Relations in Hawai‘i's Canefields

October 30, 3:00pm - 5:00pm
Mānoa Campus, Crawford 115

Dr. Franklin Odo discusses the folks songs, holehole bushi, that Japanese immigrant workers created and sang in the cane fields of Hawai‘i. Using the holehole bushi as historical records, Odo explores how tales of love, lust, and sexual agency among Japanese immigrant women were shaped by the conditions of labor and family life in the exploitative plantation system.

In a similar tradition to African American blues singers following the Great Migration, these holehole bushi provide a fresh perspective on Japanese and Asian immigrant gender and sexual relations in Hawai‘i and their entanglement within the forces, policies, and everyday practice of U.S. empire. This talk is part of Odo’s book, Voices from the Canefields: Folksongs from Japanese Immigrant Workers in Hawai‘i, out now through Oxford University Press.

This book tour is made possible by the support from the Japanese Cultural Center of Honolulu, Department of Ethnic Studies, College of Social Sciences, friends and alumni of the Colleges of Arts and Sciences, School of Asian and Pacific Studies, Center of Okinawan Studies and the Department of American Studies


Ticket Information
Free and Open to the Public

Event Sponsor
Ethnic Studies, Mānoa Campus

More Information
Brian Chung, 956-5086, chungb@hawaii.edu, Franklin Odo October 30, 3-5pm (PDF)

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