Whistling at Night In Japanese Culture

Nationality: Filipino
Age: 47
Occupation: Police Officer
Residence: Honolulu, HI
Performance Date: 4/18/21
Primary Language: English

Background

Informant is the uncle of the Interviewer from the mother’s side. Informant has lived in Hawaii for all their life and has worked as a police officer for 6 years.

Context

Informant discusses Japanese superstition of whistling at night. Interview takes place at the Interviewer’s grandmother’s house during a family dinner gathering.

Transcript

Informant: “Like um, whistling at night, it’s a superstition. That’s like an old wivestale, folklore, supposed to be, in Japanese culture, summoning the dead, stuff like that, that’s all. 

Interviewer: “I mean that one’s good, yeah. I’m stealing that from you now, so I’m gonna write about the whistling at night. So that’s just, summoning the dead in japanese culture, do you know where that comes from or?”

Informant shakes head

Interviewer: “Yeah I don’t either.”

Informant: “I mean it could be just Hawaii, might not even be in Japan, cuz I mean, uh, the whole Japanese culture in Hawaii dates back to like sugar plantation days, it could derive from then.”

Thoughts

Hawaii is a melting pot of a bunch of different cultures and traditions, but it’s been a melting pot for so long that ethnic groups have developed cultures and traditions that do not exist in the original population. Large amounts of Japanese immigrants came to Hawaii over a hundred years ago to work the sugarcane fields, and in this time have diverged greatly from mainland Japan. While whistling at night is a common trope in a surprising amount of cultures, but the traditional Japanese version holds a slightly different meaning. Whistling was supposedly used as a communication method for folklore monsters or criminals, so whistling would attract unwanted attention. It’s interesting how the same action can have two different outcomes but equally negative connotations in two, on paper, identical racial groups.

Practical Jokes in the Police Force

Nationality: Filipino
Age: 47
Occupation: Police Officer
Residence: Honolulu, HI
Performance Date: 4/18/21
Primary Language: English

Background

Informant is the uncle of the Interviewer from the mother’s side. Informant has lived in Hawaii for all their life and has worked as a police officer for 6 years.

Context

Informant discusses practical jokes played in the police force. When the interviewer asked about hazing they were told that does not happen in the police force. Interview takes place at the Interviewer’s grandmother’s house during a family dinner gathering.

Transcript

Informant: “I dunno, we do stuff like, uh, as if, if you want to go as far as HAZING… sometimes on the printers, we’ll put a note that says: “Printer upgraded to new voice activated more”. So they’ll be there like “print! Print!” like stuff like that.

Interviewer: Aww that’s cute!”

Informant: “Yeah, yeah, but nothing like hazing though. It’s um, Our department has over 2,000 police officers and you don’t know everybody so like people come and go, what we have is called “personal movement” and it usually happens every month, so, we-we meet and, people come and go so often, and you really can’t get close to anyone, cause like, work with so much different people, uh, that’s all.”

Thoughts

I had no idea there were over 2,000 police officers on the island of Oahu, let alone in a single department, so that caught me off guard. I also had no idea about how quickly police officers come and go, and how they’re moved around by the police themselves for “personal movement”. My Uncle didn’t elaborate on that further, but my guess is that maybe the police force wants to keep things pretty strictly business oriented given the nature of the job, so getting close to others may be somewhat frowned upon and practical jokes or hazing totally not tolerated. I is interesting to hear that practical joking does take place in the workspace still takes place, even if on a minor scale. I would imagine that having a practical joke played on you from one person you most likely don’t know with 2,000 coworkers is a much different experience than a practical joke in a tighter-knit workspace.

Kohelepelepe

Nationality: Asian
Age: 55
Occupation: Businessman
Residence: Honolulu, HI
Performance Date: 4/23/21
Primary Language: English

Background

Informant is college educated and has lived on Oahu, Hawaii for their whole life. Informant was dating the Interviewer’s mother for around a year.

Context

Informant discusses a Hawiian legend about the formation of the Koko head crater on Oahu. Koko head is a long dormant volcano.

Transcript

Informant: “Kohelepelepe?”

Interviewer: “Yes.”

Informant: “Koko head, if you look at it from an aerial shot, it looks like a vagina.”

Interviewer: “Oh, alright, there we go!”

Informant: “And the story is, is that Pele’s sister, Hi’iaka, they were fighting over, uh, Kamapuaa, the pig god. So pele’s sister threw her vagina, landed by koko head, and that’s how that became Kohelepelepe, which means labia lips. If you look at it from the top it looks like-”

Interviewer: “It looks like a vagina.”

Informant: “It looks like a lady.”

Thoughts

    Many Hawaiian legends, like the legends of many other cultures, have a strong emphasis on human reproductive organs. While throwing a vagina may be something completely foreign in modern western culture, stories like this exist not only in Hawaii, but other cultures as well. Off the top of my head, there’s an inuit legend of a woman cutting off her breasts and throwing them at her brother who raped her in her sleep; the sister ran away and the brother went after her, the pair would go on to become the sun and the moon. The sterilization of any talk of human anatomy in not only western legends, but western social norms as well shows how taboos are culture specific, and that actions are only taboo when society says the topic is taboo.

Fertility Rock

Nationality: Asian
Age: 56
Occupation: Teacher for the Deaf and Blind
Residence: Honolulu, HI
Performance Date: 4/23/21
Primary Language: English

Background

Informant is the mother of the Interviewer, she has been the mother of the Interviewer since the interviewer has existed and has raised them ever since.

Context

Informant discusses a folk practice that is supposed to aid in fertility that she participated in. This practice is attributed to why the Interviewer exists in the first place.

Transcript

Informant: “How about the one that relates to my getting pregnant?”

Interviewer: “…what?”

Informant: “So there’s uh, there’s a fertility rock, that uh, what’s it called? I forgot what it was called… It’s like a fertility rock on Moloka’i, so when I couldn’t get pregnant, you know we found out about that, so we went to Moloka’i with Uncle dean, and I went, oh the Phallic Rock! So I went onto the phallic rock and I was like I need to get pregnant, so I like-”

(Informant bucks her hips and twirls a fake lasso, like she is riding a raging bull.)

Interviewer: “You rode the, th-the dick rock?”

Informant: “And I got pregnant after, It’s just one of those things, I had Katie after.”

Interviewer: “Wow.”

Thoughts

    Rocks in Hawaii have a great spiritual presence. They can hold energies from fertility, to the gods, to souls of the deceased. You’re not supposed to move rocks from island to island, as you will be cursed and have to seek out either a Kahuna to dispel the bad spirits or return the rock to its original location, leaving offerings of beer and food to please the spirits. I have encountered spiritually significant rocks in my life, but have never actively sought them out for spiritual or personal reasons. Hearing that my mother utilized the help of one of these rocks was interesting, as I did not know she believed in Hawaiian traditions before that. I am not convinced of the effectiveness of spirit rocks, but I respect the practice and the rich culture behind their existence.

Ali’i rock

Nationality: Asian
Age: 56
Occupation: Teacher for the Deaf and Blind
Residence: Honolulu, HI
Performance Date: 4/23/21
Primary Language: English

Background

Informant is the mother of the Interviewer, she has been the mother of the Interviewer since the ii    Interviewer has existed and has raised them ever since.

Context

Informant recalls childhood memory regarding a potentially haunted rock and how they dispelled the evil spirits plaguing them.

Transcript

Informant: “So there was this rock that grandpa got from a neighbor up the street, he was doing one of those moss rock walls. Anyways, grandma would always be watering outside and she always thought it always reminded her of a gravestone, and we had a pomeranian, Fluffy, Fluffy would always pee on it. And one day grandpa was taking her for a walk, and um, Fluffy got ran over by a truck, and her entire, her entire organs fell to her hind legs, yeah, and-”

Interviewer: “This is the one that survived, right?”

Informant: “Yeah, and the, doctor Higa at the time said that it would be a miracle if she survived, you know? It’d be a miracle, pretty much, if she survived surgery, and she survived, yeah. She had bladder problems after that, but then she ran away. And then grandma would always have this weird feeling, whenever she, she watered and would pass this rock, cause the rock was right outside of the garage, ok? So so then anyway, so she was feeling funny, so she went to all these Hawaiian, she went to Japanese ones, and like-

Interviewer: “Like priests and stuff, right?”

Informant: “Yeah, and she asked grandma if there was a rock in front of the house? Like she could visualize it. And what she told grandma was that that was the rock of the Ali’i, like a gravestone, the Ali’i, so that grandpa had to return the rock, with his friend, and they had to place it on the island, not tell anyone, and give it offerings, like beer and food. So to this day we don’t know where it is, Grandpa won’t tell us.”

Thoughts

This story was told to me since childhood as a cautionary tale to always respect native Hawaiian grounds and never take anything from them. Small rocks are ok, but large, ornamental rocks or any rock transported between islands was always off limits. While traditional Hawaiian culture is sadly a dying practice, the sentiments and influences still factor into the lives of many people who live on the islands. I am not 100% sold on all Hawaiian legends, but I still respect them and have never moved around rocks from island to island, so the story’s intended purpose was successful.