Hawaii And The Environment

'Aloha shirt' a poor fit for Japan's super cool biz summer

As part of the power-saving campaigns following the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, with air conditioners turned up to save energy, the comfortable Hawaiian shirt seems to be a natural fit for Japan's "super cool biz" campaign.

However, outside of the Ministry of the Environment, which is allowing employees to wear aloha shirts, along with polo shirts, there remains a deep-rooted aversion to government employees dressed in Hawaiian shirts, commonly referred to as "aloha shirts" in Japan.

That's ironic, because the aloha shirt has its origin in clothing manufactured by Japanese immigrants, said Ryoichi Kobayashi, president of Toyo Enterprise Co., and holder of the "aloha shirt" registered trademark in Japan.

"The traditional 'yuzen' dyers in Kyoto printed patterns on fabrics and exported them to Hawaii through Japanese immigrants," he said. "The shirt was thus born out of Japanese technology."

Starting in the early 1960s, both the public and private sectors in Hawaii, all the way up to the state governor, fielded campaigns to push for the aloha shirt to achieve the status of "formal wear" in Hawaii and to make its manufacturing a state industry.

Aloha shirts thus have close ties with Japan, but when postwar Japan began to "reimport" them from the United States, wearing one was seen as embodying the war conquerer's nation.

In 1948, "Kikyo" (Repatriation), Jiro Osaragi's novel that was printed as a serial in the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper, a character says: "The same people that competed to wear state-designated uniforms are now changing into aloha shirts. ... They are a perfect example of a stateless people."

Osaragi was far from the only intellectual of the time who deplored the abandoning of their nationality by war-defeated Japanese.

According to sociologist Koji Nanba, author of "Yankee Shinka-ron" (Treatise on the evolution of delinquents), "The Season of the Sun" (1956) is among the earliest films that featured aloha shirts. The film's popularity helped to spread the image across Japan of aloha shirts being the shirt of choice of young male delinquents, Nanba said.

In the 1973 film "Battles Without Honor and Humanity: Deadly Fight in Hiroshima," set in 1950, a junior gangster played by Sonny Chiba wears super-gaudy aloha shirts and defies the establishment.

"We were born to enjoy delicious meals and sleep with beautiful girls, do not we?" he said.

Hawaii Sea Camp Answers Call to Environmental Consciousness ...

Hilo, HI (PRWEB) February 11, 2010

Hawaii Sea Camp, a program that focuses on tropical marine science and SCUBA diving for teens through college students, has added to its two and three week summer programs with the inclusion of comprehensive – and age appropriate – marine environmental awareness activities. Camp owners credit the integration of eco-friendly educational activities into camp curriculum to their desire to offer a full spectrum of experiences to their campers and to help promote environmental consciousness.

“Some of our campers come to us because they are interested in SCUBA and tropical marine science for purely recreational purposes and some come to us because they are even interested in pursuing marine science as a career,” says Hawaii Sea Camp’s owner and Program Director, Captain John Gibbons. “But in either case they are here because they love the sea and it is our pleasure to help facilitate that interest through fun educational programs that foster a respect for the ocean and an ingrained responsibility to our environment as a whole.”

The Hawaii Sea Camp program, in fact, is the only one of its kind in Hawaii – offering a variety of camper programs and activities that include training and certifications in SCUBA diving and a variety of tropical marine science programs including fish identification, reef survey for fishes, coral reef awareness and care, coral and shell identification, proper snorkeling techniques with dolphins, dolphin behaviors, green sea turtle behaviors, coastal volcanic island geology, north pacific oceanography, and manta ray night diving techniques.

Environmental awareness activities and education are integrated seamlessly into daily camp life including low impact eco-camping and education about a variety of eco-systems that are geared to foster a lifelong respect for and responsibility to our environment. Camp operations themselves set the tone through simple programs, low operating costs, and minimal carbon emission and fuel usage – which allows the camp to leave a minimal environmental footprint overall.

“We do more than just teach our campers about respect for the environment,” says Gibbons. “We live it day to day and show them firsthand how the behaviors and activities of one person can have long standing and far reaching impact. We can all make a difference and it starts right here at Hawaii Sea Camp.

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Let's Go Hawaii, On a Budget

Asia & Pacific Review 2003/04, The Economic and Business Report

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