Polish Dancing in Japan

This week's newsletter from Culture.pl contains several articles about Poland's connections with Asia. I know that Japan has many Hawaiian hālau hula, but I never knew that it also has a group so focused on Polish folklore. Here are some excerpts (minus photos) from Sylwia Niemczyk's (2025) article (translated by Adam Zulawski) on Dancing the Kujawiak in Fukuyama: The Japanese School of Polish Folklore:

In the 1980s, Yoshiaki Oka came to a Polish village and recorded a performance by a Polish folk song-and-dance ensemble on a home video camcorder. What unexpectedly blossomed from this experience is the subject of Dagmara Furgał’s documentary ‘Japanese Kujawiak’.

‘Ko-le-ba-ny, ko-le-ba-ny. Step, step, step. Pa-ram-pam-pam, stop! The gentlemen should look over the ladies’ shoulders!’ Women in embroidered bodices, floral skirts and blouses with puffed sleeves split into two groups, some taking on the role of the men for today’s rehearsal. All of them concentrate on the instructor’s legs, silently mouthing the words, counting along with him: ‘Step, step, step, stamp, stamp.’

It is a striking scene in the film, notable not just for its uniqueness – elderly Japanese women, dressed in Polish folk costumes, dancing the kujawiak – but also for the beauty of the dance itself. Rising and falling. A vigorous sweep of the arm, a gentle lift of the chin. A stomp! The Japanese dance teacher reads the title off a record sleeve: Kujawiaczek Nieboraczek.

From bon odori to kujawiak

In the 1960s, a fashion for reviving national traditions swept through Japan, including popular interest in folk dances. Young people once again learned bon odori, a ritual ‘dance for the dead’ performed in circles or lines during Obon, Japan’s annual three-day festival commemorating the dead. Yoshiaki Oka, then in his twenties, danced in a local troupe much like his friends. For him, it was part hobby, part relief from everyday duties – after high school, he had begun working as a plumber for the waterworks in Fukuyama.

When he came to Europe for a world folk dance competition, he encountered something completely different from what he practised with his troupe – traditional dances from Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary. ‘I didn’t know dances like that even existed. It was like being hit over the head with a club!’ he recalls in Furgał’s film. On a later trip, he filmed performances in a Polish village. Back in Japan, he used that amateur cassette to learn his first steps of the polonaise and kujawiak.

Soon after, in the town of Tomonoura near Fukuyama, he founded his own Folk Dance Association.

The school in Fukuyama

Dagmara Furgał’s excellent documentary weaves together archival clips from Japanese TV programmes with contemporary footage from rehearsals at Oka’s school. ‘In Polish dance, the most important thing is to look at your partner. Even if at home you don’t look at your spouse, here you have to!’ jokes the instructor with his students. Though a few men are present, the majority of the school’s 350 students are women, usually middle-aged or older. Their short haircuts, especially the lack of braids, give the performance a very different look from a kujawiak in Poland. Yet perhaps it is precisely this meeting of two entirely different worlds that makes the dance so captivating.

The kujawiak – along with the polonaise, mazur, krakowiak and oberek – belongs to the ‘big five’ of Polish folk dances. What sets it apart is its lyrical quality: partners facing each other, swaying and gliding, a little like in the Viennese waltz. It has been called the ‘dance of love’. But the closeness it requires can be a hurdle for Japanese dancers, and the same goes for the shouted ‘U-ha!’ that punctuates the stomp. It demands openness, a shedding of reserve – no easy task in a culture that values distance and restraint. But it’s worth persevering with.

‘I feel rejuvenated, younger by about 15 years. I’m almost 60, but now I feel like I’m 40 or 45,’ declares one workshop participant. The rejuvenating power of the kujawiak touches the schools owners too: despite being in their 80s, the Okas still teach, host workshops and even invite guest instructors from Poland.

Polish instructors began visiting the school in the mid-1980s, and these links tightened further after the fall of communism. The Okas befriended distinguished choreographers and dancers, such as Jerzy Wójcik, artistic director of the Silesian Song and Dance Ensemble Śląsk and later a teacher with the Mazowsze ensemble, and his wife Ewa Wójcik, a Mazowsze dancer. The Wójciks led workshops at Oka’s school, and Japanese TV broadcasts showed them demonstrating steps and gestures while a voice-over explained that romantic dances like this were common in Poland. In one 1993 programme, the kujawiak was even described by the Japanese narrator as ‘the most romantic dance in the world’.

In the 2000s, a younger generation of choreographers, Zofia and Jan Czechlewski – also associated with Mazowsze and Śląsk – started visiting Fukuyama to teach too. In April 2024, the Czechlewskis returned to lead workshops marking the 40th anniversary of Polish-Japanese dance exchange, their visit captured by Furgał’s camera for her documentary.

Exchange in both directions

The travels have gone both ways. In 2003, Yoshiaki and his wife Yumiko danced a mazur during the 50th anniversary celebrations of Śląsk in Poland, earning enthusiastic applause. They were also the first foreigners to receive Śląsk’s honorary diploma for promoting Polish folk dance.

That same visit for the 50^th anniversary of Śląsk had another outcome: the Okas got married during their stay and held a traditional Łowicz wedding. They arrived by horse and cart to a thatched-roof cottage, and did the traditional kissing of bread. In their wedding video, we see them alongside Polish folk dancers, all of them dressed in Łowicz costumes, playing a game of chusteczka haftowana (a traditional circle dance game in which a handkerchief is used to choose partners).

‘These aren’t our dances, but we dance them now too. And then this place becomes Warsaw, and we imagine ourselves in the Royal Castle,’ says Oka. During his classes, participants also learn about Polish history and culture, as well as customs – when Zofia Czechlewska tells them that in Poland ‘ladies go first’, they all giggle. They also laugh when they hear the translated words of a song that goes: ‘I don’t want you, I don’t want you, I don’t want to know you / come to me, come to me, give me your hand.’ The Polish teacher explains that the kujawiak is about mutual teasing and flirting: ‘I don’t want to dance with you, but I do at the same time.’ This is why the pair embrace each other but also slightly lean apart.

Museum & legacy

After taking early retirement, Yoshiaki Oka fulfilled a dream he had had since the 1980s: he opened a museum of Polish folk dance, the first of its kind in Japan. Inside are photos tracing the history of Śląsk, traditional costumes (‘I bought this dress when I saw it was on sale. See how heavy it is!’ he enthuses to some visitors), and Kraków figurines. His only regret is that the museum was established too late for Jerzy Wójcik to see it. His Polish friend died in 2008.

The kujawiak itself, in the 19th century, crossed over from folk culture into classical music, inspiring composers such as Fryderyk Chopin and Karol Szymanowski. In Japan today, for more than 300 of Oka’s students, many of them retirees, it has become a reason to leave the house, a way to make new friends, and a charming enrichment of their daily life. ‘Japanese Kujawiak is a film about finding love, sustaining friendships, but also about a personal rebellion against old age, frailty and the passing of time,’ says Furgał.

For Polish viewers, the film has yet another quality. Watching this romantic beautiful dance in which lovers sway and spin, draw close and move apart, they can end up realising that there a lot of Japanese dancers in a port city near Fukuyama who know much more about this Polish custom than they do.