Dennis Ching asked me about teahouses. “I believe there may have been one located near Stream Drive in Nuuanu, mauka of Wyllie Street. Access may have been by Liliha Street or a road off Pali Highway, where Temple Emanu-El is now located.
“I’m curious to know the teahouse’s name since it was so close to my parents’ home on Namauu Drive.”
Three teahouses came to my mind, I told Ching. Nuuanu Onsen was at the end of Laimi Street, near the Queen Emma Summer Palace.
Mochizuki Tea House on Kunawai Lane, Ewa of Liliha Street, and Ishii Garden on Huna Street were also possibilities.
Japanese teahouses have an interesting history in Hawaii. My list of them tops 30 on four islands, and I’m sure there were more. Natsunoya Tea House in Alewa Heights is the sole remaining teahouse today.
Teahouses probably served more sake and beer than tea, except during Prohibition. Some began as community bathhouses and started serving refreshments to their patrons.
At one time they were the best places to find Japanese food and entertainment. Most had private spaces that could accommodate small groups or larger spaces for banquets of several hundred guests.
Ching’s question inspired me to look into Japanese teahouses, and I found some things about one in particular, Ishii Garden, and the area around it, that I think my readers will find interesting.
Alexander Hume Ford
In 1907, Alexander Hume Ford (1868-1945) came to Hawaii from his native South Carolina. He had been fascinated with surfing since he found a book about Hawaii when he was 8.
Arriving in the islands at 39 years of age, he was dismayed to find surfing in decline. He founded the Outrigger Canoe Club in 1908 to revive it. Within 10 years the Outrigger Canoe Club had 1,200 members, with hundreds more on a waiting list.
Ford said he was walking along School Street one day when he crossed a bridge above Nuuanu Stream. Looking mauka, he saw a beautiful vista.
Monkeypod trees shaded the area. Farther up, he saw two white waterfalls, Waikahalulu Falls. Ford said, “It was the most delectable spot I had ever visited in any land, and I had been around the globe more than twice over.”
The next day, he took several friends to see it, and they agreed it was a hidden gem in Hawaii.
Queen Lili‘uokalani had bathed there as a young girl. Her friend Mary Foster had a home and garden just makai of the park. The H-1 freeway divides the two today.
Pan-Pacific Union
Ford met Y. Ishii, who lived in that part of Nuuanu. He spoke no English but they became fast friends. Writer Jack London visited Ford. London and Ishii had become interested in what Ford had called the Pan- Pacific Union.
It was similar to today’s East-West Center. It held educational and scientific conferences in Honolulu in the 1920-1940 period to advance the cooperation of people and countries in the Pacific.
Former Outrigger Canoe Club archivist Barbara Del Piano wrote, “Ford traveled to Washington where he convinced President Warren G. Harding, Henry Cabot Lodge, and Prince Iesato Tokugawa (Japanese Delegate) of the importance of such an organization and garnered their unfailing support.
“In addition to founding the Outrigger, Ford also established the Hawaiian Trail and Mountain Club, Mid- Pacific Magazine, and was influential in designating Haleakala as a National Park.”
The site along Nuuanu Stream was selected to be the home of the Pan-Pacific Park.
Ishii Garden
Ishii offered to build a teahouse in the park. It opened in 1918 as the Pan-Pacific Gardens.
Ishii’s advertisements said the lush tropical setting was perfect for a delightful evening.
Little Japanese cottages, where private parties could be entertained, surrounded a bigger house for groups of about 100.
A furnace heated a deep bathing pool for guests to soak in. It had high bamboo walls for privacy and an unobstructed view of the Koolau Mountains. Colorful paper lanterns, weeping willows, a carp pond and a small pagoda all contributed to Ishii Garden’s unique ambiance.
Waitresses in kimonos served sukiyaki — “cooked at your table and served piping hot” — sashimi, tempura, steamed mullet and baked lobster. In 1922 it changed its name to Ishii Garden Tea House.
‘Tom Sawyer life’
Russell Komoto grew up downstream from Ishii Garden and played there with friends when he was in grade school.
“We had such a ‘Tom Sawyer life,’ growing up a 15-minute-walk to our ‘Garden of Eden’ playground,” he said.
“Waolani Stream feeds makai from Oahu Country Club, and Ishii Garden built their tea house next to it, near Kuakini Medical Center.
“The stream then flows about 500 feet beyond the tea house site where it joins Nuuanu Stream. This is just mauka of School Street in the lower part of the Lili‘uokalani Botanical Garden.
“As kids, we used to swim there practically every day at either Ishii Garden’s small pond and waterfall or at the larger Waikahalulu Falls. We preferred Ishii because hardly anyone knew about it. The pond was over 6 feet deep in certain places.”
Waikahalulu Falls was 7 to 8 feet high, Komoto estimated. The falls near Ishii Garden on Waolani Stream were smaller, maybe 5 feet tall.
“The Ishii Garden staff allowed us to swim on their property,” Komoto recalled. “They were pretty good about it.
“We used to make nighttime raids on the tea house after they closed, to ‘borrow’ sodas which the tea house kept in cases on the stairs leading down to the lower party rooms which overlooked the waterfall.
“A lot of the patrons threw coins in the stream for us to dive for. The tips they left on their tables for the waitresses were off limits, we felt. It would’ve been easy to steal them when the waitresses were going up and down the stairs cleaning the room.
“We only swam for a little while when the water was murky, because that meant there was rain up in the valley. We always listened for a roaring noise, which meant a flash flood.”
I asked Komoto whether he ever witnessed that.
“Yes,” he said. “Numerous times. The four-unit apartment we lived in was only 3 feet from the river and our hardworking landlord kept adding to the cement retaining wall so there was very little chance that our apartment building would collapse into the rapids.
“All along the Ewa side of the stream, going all the way up to Ishii Garden, there were a lot of houses or apartments built along the river.
“Whenever there was heavy rain, we would all gather nearby and listen for the flash flood we knew would come. It sounded like a freight train, rumbling down from above, then whoosh, it would flow past us.
“One second there was a trickling stream about 4 to 6 feet wide and the next second there was raging rapids 30 feet wide. All the vegetation on the riverbanks would be bent back. If you fell in, you would not be able to get out until you passed Foster Botanical Gardens, where the stream entered a cement canal.”
Epilogue
Ford’s Pan-Pacific Union declined as he grew older. When he died in 1945, The Honolulu Advertiser wrote that Ford “did more than any other man to acquaint the whole wide world with the importance of Hawaii in the Pacific theater.”
The Ishii Garden Tea House went out of business around 1974. Remnants of it are still visible just before the entrance to the Nuuanu Park Place condo on Huna Street, or from Stillwell Lane on the Kuakini Medical Center campus.
The city acquired Lili‘uokalani Botanical Garden, and it remains a mostly hidden gem in the heart of Honolulu. There’s a small parking lot off Kuakini Street for visitors.
Bob Sigall is the author of the five “The Companies We Keep” books. Contact him at Sigall@Yahoo.com or sign up for his free email newsletter at RearviewMirrorInsider.com.
