Rise and Fall of Languages in “Paradise”

January 30, 2026-March 31, 2026
Location: Bridge Gallery

Japanese schools, community voices, and the politics of assimilation in Hawaiʻi

Hawaiʻi has long been home to Kānaka Maoli and has also attracted people from a wide range of ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Communities have lived side by side while maintaining their own languages and adopting others.

This exhibition focuses on Japanese-language education and Japanese American community life in Hawaiʻi, introducing approximately a dozen Japanese-language school textbooks compiled and edited locally as early as the 1920s. Through interpretive panels and posters organized along a 20th-century timeline, the exhibition offers perspectives on “life in Hawaiʻi” as seen through language, education, and everyday practice. A concluding section situates these histories within broader language dynamics in Hawaiʻi, including Pidgin (Hawaiʻi Creole English) and post-1970s Hawaiian language revitalization and education.

The exhibition draws on materials from the Japan Collection and other holdings at Hamilton Library, including the Hawaiian Collection, the Romanzo Adams Social Research Laboratory Collection & Hawaiʻi War Records Depository (University Archives), and a series of U.S. War Department Phrase books (Government Documents Collection).

From March 24 to 27, an inter-college symposium—Japanese Language Education in Hawaiʻi in the Interwar Period (1920s–1930s): Second Languages, Assimilation, and Ethno-Nationalism—will be held at Hamilton Library, in cooperation with the UHM College of Arts, Languages, and Letters (CALL) and the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics, with invited overseas guests and a keynote speaker.

Rise and Fall of Languages in “Paradise” is co-organized by the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics and Hamilton Library.