HALEIWA, Hawaii — Marge and Jim Russell recently stood at the water's edge with their grandchildren and several hundred other people, ready to launch more than 1,000 paper lanterns on the receding tide, beacons to guide home ancestral spirits believed to have returned that night for a Japanese Buddhist ritual known as a bon dance.
But the Russells are not Japanese. Or even Buddhists. They are self-described Norwegian Lutherans from Waialua, a nearby town, who went to the annual dance of the Jodo Buddhist Mission here to watch the traditional Japanese dancing, enjoy the lantern spectacle and take part in Hawaii's beloved summer bon dance season.
"Everybody in Hawaii shares everybody else's customs," Mrs. Russell said, adding that the family attends the event every year.
Bon dances are Buddhist religious events in which participants dance to rejoice in the annual return visit of departed loved ones, a return interpreted symbolically by some denominations and literally by others, including the Haleiwa mission.
Bon dances arrived here with Japanese sugar workers in the 19th century. But in recent decades, the celebrations have crossed ethnic and religious lines to become an elaborate church fair.
All summer long, families of Philippine, Caucasian, Hawaiian, Chinese and multiethnic ancestry arrive with lawn chairs at the dozens of bon dances across the state. They travel to dance, socialize and enjoy favorites like saimin, or noodle soup, and barbecued teriyaki beef sticks.
"Bon dance isn't only if you're Buddhist," said Kalena Soltren, a senior at the University of Hawaii who is of Puerto Rican ancestry.
The student recently attended the Koboji Shingon Mission bon dance in Honolulu with a carload of friends.
"It's to celebrate the culture," the student said. "Hawaii is so mixed you feel like you're part of the culture, even if you're not Japanese."
Many dances are fund-raising events for the temples and are often known for a special aspect, the Haleiwa mission for its lanterns, or toro nagashi; the Moiliili Hongwanji Mission in Honolulu for its homemade chili and community spirit; and the Jikoen Hongwanji Mission in Honolulu for its lively Okinawan dances. Bon dance connoisseurs know the ins and outs of each.
"They have different dances at different churches," said Gregg Nakayama, 25, who went to the Koboji and Haleiwa dances and said he danced every week all summer. "After doing it for so many years, you figure out which ones to go to."
To politicians, all bon dances are fertile voter territory. State Representative Ed Case, a Democratic candidate for governor, shook hands and smiled his way through the crowd at Haleiwa and said he had been to more than six dances this year.
At Haleiwa, dancers in elegant kimonos, robelike yukatas and short-cropped coats spun around the yagura, or musicians' tower, in concentric circles. A clan of clumsy youngsters in shorts and flip-flops watched the elders, trying to follow along to dances that spoke of spiritual renewal or pantomimed shoveling, cane hauling and other plantation chores.
A crush pushed into the circle to clap and kick and ease backward when the musicians beat out a demanding rhythm on Japanese drums and chimes. With the advent of recorded music for the electric slide, a recent addition to the bon dance repertory, saimin-munching spectators had their toes trampled.
If bon dances have kept the younger generation's attention with numbers like the electric slide and even one based on the Pokemón cartoon, some scholars and ministers said that Hawaii's Japanese Buddhist church had not and that the popularity of the bon dance masked a troubling decline in membership.
Hawaii had an estimated 100,000 Buddhists in 1999, according to the most recent figures from the State of Hawaii Data Book, or roughly 8 percent of the population. Hawaii is one of nine states with 50 or more Buddhist centers, said Grove Harris, project manager at the Pluralism Project at Harvard.
But Honpa Hongwanji Hawaii Betsuin in Honolulu, thought to be the largest temple in the largest denomination in the state, has lost nearly half its membership, falling to 1,300 families from 2,500 in 1990, the Rev. Reynold Fujikawa said.
"Many of the younger generation see the temple as just something for their grandparents," Mr. Fujikawa said.
Young people are not succeeding elderly members who die, scholars said, at least partly because they do not need the cultural comfort that the temple provided their immigrant predecessors. Japanese Buddhists are also losing adherents to intermarriage, the scholars said, which in Hawaii accounts for more than 50 percent of all unions, according to the State Health Department. Some scholars also fault the missions for relying too heavily on ministers from Japan and for being stuck in what they call old-fashioned ways.
"They're still chanting the same chants they've been chanting for 100 years, and while my grandfather might have understood it, the fourth and fifth generations don't," George Tanabe, a professor of religion at the University of Hawaii, said. "No one wants to sit through a ritual that's meaningless."
But if people are skipping the temples, Mr. Fujikawa said he liked to think that they absorbed at least some of Buddhism's beliefs at the dances. In Haleiwa, the solemnity of sending the lanterns to sea to guide the loved ones home sent a hush through the crowd.
"It's beautiful, huh," Colleen Izutsu from Honolulu said as she watched the lights drift out from shore. "Kind of sad, though. Like saying goodbye — for another year, anyway."