Popular Obon Odori Song Debuted 20 Years Ago

‘Ei Ja Nai Ka’ is featured at Obons on the Mainland and Hawaii

The drum rhythm came to PJ Hirabayashi in a dream 30 years ago: “Do-ko, Do-ko, Do-ko, Do-ko.”

An original member of San Jose Taiko, she pictured a procession of taiko players and community members in San Jose Japantown, all moving down the street to that beat. 

Over the next seven years, her dream slowly evolved into a song and dance she named “Ei Ja Nai Ka (Isn’t it Good).” It blossomed into an Obon Odori phenomenon that is a crowd favorite every year at the San Jose Buddhist Church Betsuin Obon Festival and Obons at other Buddhist temples in the mainland and Hawaii. The song melds Hirabayashi’s desire to highlight Japanese American history and also to keep expanding taiko into songs that combine the beat of the drums with dance and lyrics. 

“Having people dance ‘Ei Ja Nai Ka’ is an affirmation and validation of a way to commemorate the history,” she said during a joint interview with longtime San Jose Obon Odori instructor Reiko Iwanaga, who had a key role in the evolution of what was a taiko song into an Obon song.

UC Berkeley student Kohei Tsuchitani, a former San Jose Junior Taiko member and current member of Raijin Taiko at Cal, looks forward to the dance.

“It’s always so much fun dancing ‘Ei Ja Nai Ka,’’’ said Tsuchitani, who grew up participating in San Jose Betsuin activities. “Whether it’s seeing groups of kids running around, groups of friends laughing while teaching parts of the dance on the fly … I always feel a strong sense of togetherness when ‘Ei Ja Nai Ka’ is performed.”

Twenty years ago this summer, “Ei Ja Nai Ka” premiered as an Obon dance at the San Jose Buddhist Church Betsuin’s Obon Festival, just feet away from the temple gymnasium where San Jose Taiko was born 31 years earlier. It turned out to be a milestone performance. 

In Japan, taiko is an integral part of Obon. Drums are often placed on the yagura, the main stage, and drum beats drive the dancing. As recently as the 1950s, an Issei man — his name may have been lost to history — played a drum at the San Jose Obon on the yagura.

But for decades, taiko were not played during the San Jose Betsuin’s Obon Odori.

San Jose Taiko had been a part of the Betsuin’s Obon Festival since 1974, but as pre-dancing entertainment. That changed in 2004 when Iwanaga, who became head dance instructor a few years earlier, approached Hirabayashi about having San Jose Taiko play a song for odori.

During the interview, Hirabayashi praised Iwanaga for breaking with what had been the custom. But for Iwanaga, it just made sense.

“They’re an institution here and taiko is part of Obon,” said Iwanaga, a lifelong member of the San Jose temple whose father-in-law, Rev. Yoshio Iwanaga, introduced Obon dancing in the mainland United States in the early 1930s.

When the two met to discuss the idea, Hirabayashi came with two possible songs. She remembers when Iwanaga heard a recording of “Ei Ja Nai Ka,” she immediately said “that one!”

“Ei Ja Nai Ka” was an immediate odori hit, with its infectious beat, uplifting lyrics and spirited choreography. People have danced to it at Obon festivals in Mountain View, San Francisco, Maui, and the 15 temples in the BCA’s Southern District, and also at taiko conferences and other festivals from Brazil to Canada, Utah to England.

The success of “Ei Ja Nai Ka” led to a bigger role for San Jose Taiko in the odori, notably popular collaborations with the Chidori Band, which has provided live music for the dancing since the 1950s. Taiko’s participation and the taiko-band partnership contributed to the growing popularity of odori in San Jose. This year, there were 1,725 dancers on Saturday and 1,089 dancers on Sunday, more than double the 660 and 380 who danced in 2004 when “Ei Ja Nai Ka” was introduced.

“I see it as a prime example of American bon, incorporating Japanese history or culture … that’s very universally enjoyed,” Iwanaga said. “I think it touches everybody’s emotions because everyone can relate (to it).”

“Ei Ja Nai Ka” combines Hirabayashi’s passions: taiko, Japanese American culture, history and community.  Two experiences — one in California and the other in Japan — exhilarated and inspired Hirabayashi to create the song. In the early 1970s, she danced to “Tanko Bushi Rock” a zestful takeoff on the traditional coal miner’s dance where young Asian Americans would spontaneously jump up to dance at the close of groundbreaking Japanese American singers Nobuko Miyamoto and Chris Iijima’s community concerts. During a 1972 visit to Japan, she was dazzled by the Awa Odori, a part of the Obon observance in Tokushima Prefecture in Japan and which features an “Ei Ja Nai Ka” chant.

Eventually, Hirabayashi said she felt the “need to create something to commemorate the Issei, the first immigrants from Japan, because we don't have that story” in a dance like “Tanko Bushi,” the coal miner’s dance and other folk dances from Japan.

Hirabayashi’s “Ei Ja Nai Ka” is a tribute to the Issei, the first generation Japanese immigrants to the United States and their struggles to build a new life here after a long sea voyage from Japan. The movements evoke their hard work: digging, picking, gathering, sweating all the while and turning a big railroad engine wheel.

“It's the dig for the farming. The pick pick for mining. A stylized movement for my grandfather, who worked on the Southern Pacific Railroad,” Hirabayashi said. “There’s sweating, of course, like in the ‘Tanko Bushi’ dance. There’s a movement for fishing where workers throw the net out to sea and bring in the catch. It’s a metaphor where workers need to collectively work together to bring in the catch for the whole village, for the community.”

There are no “big wheels” that control a train on the railroad; yet, Hirabayashi intended the movement to be a metaphor, too, for the workers steering the economy of the nation.

 “The work our Issei pioneers did may be regarded as menial,” she said. “But, in fact, they were essential workers.”

“Ei Ja Nai Ka” was completed in 2001, when Hirabayashi asked friend Yoko Fujimoto, a singer and member of the famed KODO taiko group in Japan, to write the music and lyrics in collaboration with Hirabayashi and Nobuko Miyamoto. 

“I had the ingredients, of course, for the taiko rhythms, the dance, and chant,” Hirabayashi said. “Then I asked Yoko if she could create in Japanese, the lyrics.”

She took Miyamoto and Fujimoto to the Japanese American Museum of San Jose to show Japanese American history in Santa Clara County. Fujimoto cried after seeing the hardships the Issei endured, and told Hirabayashi “everyone in Japan should know about this.” 

The first verse goes:

“Holding onto a dream, riding over rough wavesGrandpa and GrandmaSweat dripping, working without sparing yourselfWatching your back, I learned the spirit of The Japanese heart”

Dr. Wynn Kiyama, a musicologist who researches Obon odori in the United States, called the song “a wonderful tribute to the Issei generation and the difficult work they had to do to make a living.”

The song also features a call-and-response between the singers and the dancers with booming chants of “Ei Ja Nai Ka!” 

The “Ei Ja Nai Ka” in the Awa Odori is colloquially translated as “what the heck.” Hirabayashi said she went to the late Rev. Hiroshi Abiko, a founder of San Jose Taiko when he was a minister at the San Jose Betsuin, for what the saying meant to him. He replied, “Aah, I like to think of ‘Ei ja Nai Ka’ as a literal translation —‘isn’t it good?’ — to be aware and grateful of the good that always surrounds us.”

Twenty years after its introduction as an Obon dance, “Ei Jai Nai Ka” keeps spreading and remains arguably one of the most popular numbers. 

“It is an anthem of gratitude of what came before us,” Hirabayashi said.

“I think it's the most impactful dance we’ve had,” Iwanaga said.

Hirabayashi replied: “You were a midwife to bring it into … ”

“Obon consciousness,” Iwanaga said finishing the sentence.

“Yes,” Hirabayashi exclaimed, adding:

“And we have no idea how it’s going to grow up. I hope that ‘Ei Ja Nai Ka’ will continue to be shared and transmitted as a dance of joy and gratitude.”