![]() Kina’s father is a third-generation Okinawan and grew up in Hawaiʻi. One day, Tonouchi came across women with hajichi in a series of artworks he saw online about plantation laborers by Laura Kina, an illustrator based in Chicago. The grandmother answered, “When your great-grandmother immigrated from Okinawa to Hawaiʻi in 1908, there was no one with hajichi around her, and she felt ashamed.” While maintaining a deep connection to his Okinawan roots, Tonouchi is also known for advocating for Hawaiʻi’s Pidgin language and calls himself “ Da Pidgin Guerrilla.” In Significant Moments in da Life of Oriental Faddah and Son, he described his experience and memory through his daily life with his family as a speaker of Hawaiʻi Pidgin and as an Okinawan person in Hawaiʻi. He asked why his great-grandmother always turned her palms face up in family photos. When Tonouchi published his poems in Significant Moments in da Life of Oriental Faddah and Son (2011), he depicted an exchange between he and his grandmother. Since no one taught him what it was, he was mystified. When Tonouchi was little, he didn’t know the meaning of hajichi and was worried if his great-grandmother had a disease. He said he was motivated to write the book as his great-grandmother had hajichi tattoos on her hands. Tonouchi wrote Okinawan Princess: Da Legend of Hajichi Tattoos (2019). Two types of Hajichi by Higa Seisei 比嘉盛清, 19th century ©Tokyo National Museum Lee Tonouchi, a fourth-generation Okinawan writer born and raised in Hawaiʻi, discusses the origins of Hawaiʻi Creole also known as Pidgin, as well as the diversity of the cultures in Hawaiʻi, and his own experience with hajichi. Hajichi was the cultural heritage of the Ryukyu Kingdom, a rite of passage to mark the coming of age, marriage, and a talisman, which was desired by women. ![]() ![]() More than 120 years ago, the custom of hajichi, a deep blue pattern tattooed on the back of women’s hands in Okinawa and the Ryukyu Islands, was banned by the Meiji government and gradually disappeared. ![]()
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