Nekketsu Takei's Hawaiʻi

Mapping the Hawaiʻi of 1906, a largely Japanese-populated land abundant in sugar cane...

In the 19th century, Hawaiian scholars Kamakau and Kepelino attributed the discovery of Hawai‘i to a fisherman named Hawai‘iloa...the Big Island was named after him while Kaua‘i, O‘ahu, and Maui were named after his children. Hawai‘iloa’s navigator, Makali‘i, steered in the direction of Iao, the Eastern Star, and hoku‘ula, the red star. After replenishing his supplies, Hawai‘iloa returned home and brought his wife and his children back to Hawai‘i, again using the fixed stars as guides. The Hawaiian people are all descended from him.

Dennis Kawaharada, Professor at Kapi‘olani Community College

The modern story of Hawaiʻi is driven largely by forces of foreign immigration and invasion. Although Captain James Cook is often credited with the “discovery” of the Hawaiian Islands in 1778, archeological evidence suggests that Japanese migrants had arrived to the island 500 years prior, being the first possible non-Polynesian visitors to the archipelago.

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The contemporary Hawaiian Islands as seen via satellite imagery

In recorded history, Japanese migration begins in the early 19th century with a small group of rescued Japanese sailors, with records of three of their naturalizations into the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi existing before 1850.

From the other side of the Pacific, insurgents from the United States Military overthrew the native Queen of Hawaiʻi in 1893, declaring themselves the Republic of Hawaiʻi in 1894. The republic would change officially to the territory of Hawaiʻi in 1900, and in 1959, it would officially become the 50th U.S. State.

Huntington's Map Collection

Nekketsu Takei’s Japanese Maps of Hawaiʻi

Nekketsu Takei, Newly compiled map of Hawaiʻi, 1906. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.

Nekketsu Takei, Map of Honolulu, 1906.  | The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.

Nekketsu Takei’s Maps

Written by Li Wei Yang

When Nekketsu Takei (1879–1961) traveled by steamship to Honolulu in late 1903, he was one of hundreds of migrants on board escaping economic hardships in rural Japan for employment opportunities in Hawaiʻi. Once cleared by immigration inspectors, many of the Japanese men, women, and children were transferred to sugar plantations that dotted the archipelago. A fortunate few with money, such as Takei, sought to start businesses or join existing ones in Honolulu and elsewhere. Takei, a highly educated young man from an upper-middle-class family in the Yamaguchi prefecture, spent the next few years in Honolulu, where he studied Hawaiian and American history, delivered right-wing political lectures to Japanese laborers at various sugar plantations, and devoted himself to learning cartography, or mapmaking. In 1906, he produced maps of Hawaiʻi to attract Japanese immigrants as well as to help newcomers familiarize themselves with the islands. The Huntington holds two of Takei’s maps as part of its Pacific Rim collections.

To read more about Nekketsu Takei's story, click the link below.

Connecting Past to Present

Using ArcGIS Pro's Georeferencing tools, Takei's depictions of the Hawaiian Islands can be spatially matched to the 21st century's digital globe. Dozens of geographic control points (a manually identified point of similarity between the archival map and the current day basemap) were used across the depictions of the Hawaiian Island Chain, the insets of four of the major islands, as well as the depiction of what is now known as Honolulu's Chinatown. While Takei's maps are not survey-grade, the incredible levels of detail on the georeferenced maps are transformed into insightful layers of geospatial data, enabling comparisons to pre-existing maps and imagery of contemporary Hawaiʻi.

What starts as a paper map can be tied back to its original source terrain through the power of GIS.

For example, take note here of the inset map of the Hawaiian Island Chain.

Using ArcGIS Pro, we can georectify Nekketsu's map in order to discover how the data of 1906 Hawaiʻi might compare to the modern day.

Thus, where there is a feature that exists in our Esri basemap...

We can see how it was depicted by Nekketsu in the early 20th century, when Queen Liliʻuokalani was still alive.

And reference the important settlements of the day...

...To those of the present.

In the case of Oʻahu, we can see how the landscape existed...

...before the development of modern infrastructure such as airports, harbors, and military bases.

We can further paint the picture using some of the Huntington Library's photo records as well as extracted labels from Takei's map. Click on any of the red diamond symbols to view a picture from late 19th/early 20th century Oʻahu.

Honolulu, Hawaiʻi's Gateway

Chinatown Fire

Honolulu's Chinatown district includes 36 acres of historic buildings that date to the early 1900s, the time of Takei. This district has the distinction of being considered to be one of the oldest Chinatowns in the United States, with its history spanning before 1886. Between 1886 and 1900, two devastating fires nearly destroyed the entire built environment of the district, making Takei's map possibly the first map available of the area post 1900 fire.

The first fire of 1886 broke out due to an uncontrolled restaurant fire on the corner of Hotel and Smith streets, and the subsequent 1899 fire was the result of what was intended to be a controlled burning growing out of control. The controlled burning was intended to stop the spread of the Bubonic plague, which had an outbreak leading to the death of 13 people. Unfortunately, the fire spread in a way that destroyed nearly every building. The buildings of the post-1900 era reflect an attempt to design buildings that are immune to such a disaster ever happening again.

Source: Hawaiʻi State Archives

Takei's Honolulu map aims to highlight local businesses and their locations.

Specifically, he marked Japanese businesses that existed at that time, with the hope of increasing immigration to this central and bustling urban location.

Using ArcGIS Pro, the building features were estimated and extracted. Here we can see how the Japanese labels translate and their approximate location on a contemporary map of Honolulu.

Using a 3D visualization, we see that the buildings of Takei's time contrasts greatly with the buildings of today (the buildings in white). The red and blue buildings of Takei's time are not to scale.

Okazaki Tailor, Hotel Street, Honolulu

Not too far from the intersection of Hotel and Smith, where the fire of 1886 broke out, stands a clustering of Japanese retail business. This includes the Okazaki Tailor, marked in blue.

Otoji Okazaki arrived in Hawaiʻi in 1898, an immigrant from Fukushima. In 1902, he was able to open a tailor shop three years after leaving the Ewa Plantation.

Okazaki tailor, Hotel Street, Honolulu, ca.1910

Photographer unknown, Bishop Museum Archives

Kobayashi Hotel, Beretania Street, Honolulu

In 1892, the Kobayashi Hotel was founded by Unosuke Kobayashi, an immigrant from Hiroshima. The original building on Smith street was destroyed during the 1899 Chinatown fire, and the hotel was reopened in Palama. In 1903, the building depicted in the photo below (and on the map) was erected on Beretania Street.

Photographer unknown, Bishop Museum Archives

Kawasaki Ryokan Hotel, River Street, Honolulu

In Takei's time, lodging at a standard hotel for immigrants, such as the Kawasaki Hotel, would cost you 40 cents a day, with meals costing 15 cents. These hotels were often stops for people returning home to Japan or for those who intended to move onwards to the United States.

Photographer unknown, Bishop Museum Archives

Yamamoto Photo Studio and Moriguchi Store, Hotel Street, Honolulu

Built in 1902 and 1888 respectively, both structures still stand today.

Photographer unknown, Bishop Museum Archives

Current Street View of Yamamoto Photo Studio and Moriguchi Store:

Hamamoto Photo Studio, Hotel Street, Honolulu

On the corner of Hotel and Maunakea streets is where the Hamamoto Photo Studiowas located. The museum resided in the Joseph P. Mendonca Building, built in 1901, one of the first to be built following the Chinatown Fire of 1900.

Now housing many local businesses, this 1901 building is still standing in Chinatown today.

The Promise of Sugar

Massive immigration to Hawaiʻi truly begins in the 1850s with the growth of the sugar industry, with large demands for cheap labor, with the first Japanese recruits originating from the Hawaiian Consul General in Yokohama soliciting 148 Japanese immigrants. This group is referred to as the Gannen Mono, the "First Year People," as they arrived in Hawaiʻi in the first year of the reign of Emperor Meiji.

Worker's housing on the Hilo Sugar Plantation ca.1880

An economic depression in Japan as well as a diplomatic visit from King Kalakaua in 1881 spurred on a wave of agricultural workers seeking better working conditions. By 1900, 47,508 men and 13,603 women of Japanese ethnicity were noted in the Hawaiian census.

Viewing Nekketsu's maps and its information on the plantations of the day over current terrain allows Nekketsu's map to exist as an interactive 3D view of history. Below, we can explore the evolution of the sugar cane industry on the islands amidst Takei's observations.

Island of Oʻahu

While sugar cane has been observed growing naturally on the islands of Hawaiʻi since the time of Captain Cook, the first sugar cane plantation was not established until 1825 on the island of Oʻahu. However, it ceased operations within its first two years of existence.

Koloa Sugar Plantation

Ten years after the establishment of the first plantation on Oʻahu, Ladd & Company established the Koloa Sugar Plantation on the island of Kauai. Two years after beginning its operations, Koloa exported two tons of sugar, the first sugar export in Hawaiian history.

The industrialized Koloa facility from 1912 are much of what remains of the now-defunct facility. Source: ParrishKauai.com

The Lihue Plantation

The Lihue Plantation (1849) was one of the oldest plantations in Hawaiʻi. For what promised to be a booming business, high-profile investors were brought in, such as Boston businessman Henry Pierce, Chief Supreme Court Justice William Little Lee, and First Hawaiian Bank co-founder Charles Reed Bishop. With an extensive network of irrigation ditches throughout the property and mountainside, the Lihue plantation set a new high for cost and modernization for sugar plantations.

ca. 1900 Lihue Mill. Photo Source: Grove Farm and Waioli Mission House museums

ca.1927 Lihue Mill. Photo Source: Grove Farm and Waioli Mission House museums

Ewa Plantation Company

The Ewa Plantation Company's history begins in 1890, with 15 men, 2 horses, and 9 mules. By Takei's time, the Ewa Plantation company set the new record for raising ten tons of sugar per acre and was a community of around 2,500 people. To support this population, kindergartens, hospitals, and housing were constructed.

A close by facility to Pearl Harbor, the attacks on December 7th, 1941 caused the Ewa Plantation to suffer damage from anti-aircraft munitions and machine gun fire.

Island of Maui

The history of Sugar Plantations on the island of Maui spans over 134 years, with the last harvest taking place in 2016.

Hawaiian Commercial and Sugar Company (HC&S)

Both the first and last plantation to operate on Maui was the Hawaiian Commercial and Sugar Company (HC&S). It was highly productive around the time of Takei, but now leaves 36,000 acres of land being reconsidered for more sustainable applications. Existing today on the site of HC&S's plantation is the Sugar Museum, an interactive museum dedicated to preserving the history of Hawaii's sugar cane culture.

Photo Source: Sugar Museum

The Island of Hawaiʻi

The Island of Hawaiʻi was home to many plantations, occupying fertile lands created by the volcanic flows sourced from the island's 5 volcanoes.

The Hawaiian Agricultural Company

The Hawaiian Agricultural Company's location in Pahala proved to be fruitful as it was at the base of a volcano. As a result of the 1868 eruption of Mauna Loa, many fields on this plantation proved to have exceptional yields due to high sulfur content.

Japanese Laborers at the Hawaiian Agricultural Company

Due to its remote location, high quality amenities were constructed at the site, often considered to be the gold standard for sugar plantations of the time.

Photo Source: https://imagesofoldhawaii.com/pahala-plantation/

Photo Source: https://imagesofoldhawaii.com/pahala-plantation/

Takei, the Cartographer

In Takei's time, photography and aviation were two technologies still in their infancy. Today, mapping is often informed by aerial and space-based photography, and we can see how cartography was a subjective, imperfect, and artistic craft.

Explore the Islands Nekketsu made insets of: Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi (the big island), Maui, and Kauai.

Nekketsu Takei may not have known it, but he created a time capsule of one of the most distinct periods of time in Hawaiʻi's history. We are able to glimpse into a period of cultural dominance between Hawaiʻi's original caretakers, the Japanese, and the United States, right before the effects of the "Gentleman's Agreement," which effectively barred Japanese immigration for a time. We can see how locations such as the Ewa Plantation link to various Japanese businesses and historic buildings in Honolulu. Takei's map reminds one that our world and his were not all too different. Although the golden age of the Hawaiian sugar cane industry has largely ended, and some of the landmarks of Takei's time may only exist as abandoned infrastructure, the legacy is still felt.

Credits:

Takei Nekketsu's Map, as well as all the Oʻahu Photos of Interest, are collections in the Huntington Library's Pacific Rim Collection.

Nekketsu Takei, Newly compiled map of Hawaiʻi, 1906. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.

Nekketsu Takei, Map of Honolulu, 1906.  | The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.

Source: Hawaiʻi State Archives

Worker's housing on the Hilo Sugar Plantation ca.1880

The industrialized Koloa facility from 1912 are much of what remains of the now-defunct facility. Source: ParrishKauai.com

ca. 1900 Lihue Mill. Photo Source: Grove Farm and Waioli Mission House museums

ca.1927 Lihue Mill. Photo Source: Grove Farm and Waioli Mission House museums

Photo Source: Sugar Museum

Japanese Laborers at the Hawaiian Agricultural Company

Photo Source: https://imagesofoldhawaii.com/pahala-plantation/

Photo Source: https://imagesofoldhawaii.com/pahala-plantation/