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Today, everyone knows Hawai‘i as a place for tourism. But in the Meiji period (1868–1912), Japan and the Hawaiian Kingdom actually signed a migration agreement. This agreement encouraged Japanese people to go to Hawai‘i to work on sugar cane farms there. During the first ten years, over 29,000 Japanese went to work in Hawai‘i on three-year contracts. These people were known as “government-sponsored immigrants.”
Farm work in an unfamiliar land was difficult for these immigrants, but they persevered by singing songs and encouraging one another. The songs that emerged from these customs are known as “Holehole bushi”. Here, you can listen to and discover what what kinds of songs they are.
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