Hawaiʻi became the 50th state in the United States in 1959. An expedition by Captain James Cook led Europeans to the region in 1778. But the history of these islands is far older and far more complex. Archeological evidence places Polynesians on the archipelago—not yet called Hawaiʻi—as early as 940 AD. Since then, both the people and the politics of Hawaiʻi have experienced tremendous transformation.
Today, those of Native Hawaiʻian and Pacific Islander ancestry make up about 10 percent of Hawaiʻi’s population. Fewer than 30 percent of Hawai’i’s people claim some Native Hawaiʻian and Pacific Islander heritage along with another race. Asians, largely of Filipino and Japanese descent, account for 37 percent of the islands’ citizens. And more than half of Hawai’i’s people—56 percent—descend from Asian and other races combined.
As a place and its people change, the maps do, too.
The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens houses a collection of maps. Among them are those of Nekketsu Takei, a lecturer and cartographer who arrived in Honolulu from Japan in 1903. Takei’s maps are shared in a detailed interactive story produced by the library. It outlines the history of Japanese in Hawaiʻi, the life of Takei, and the maps he produced. The interactive portions of the narrative overlay Takei’s cartography on present-day interactive maps. Such a juxtaposition invites readers to explore his work with modern familiarity.
This story and The Huntington’s collection help us to understand the powerful influence of trade, migration, and exploitation. All of which take place on the stage of geography, lit simultaneously by the forces of change and continuity.
More to Explore
- Read more about Nekketsu Takei.
- Learn about other maps in The Huntington’s collection.
- Explore the demographics of Hawaiʻi.
