By Walter Wright
Advertiser Staff Writer

There were fish flying from bamboo poles, flying fish under glass, fish on paper, fish impressed in ceramic bowls and even fish swimming in water yesterday as the finny symbol of Boys' Day splashed across a festival at the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii.

For four hundred years, Japanese families with sons have celebrated the fifth day of the fifth month by flying kite-like carp streamers called koi nobori outside their houses.

The carp is a symbol of manliness, embodying the virtues of ambition, energy, strength, perseverance and the will to succeed, according to Susan Miyao of the center.

Luke Shinsato, 10, from Ryukyukoku Matsuri Taiko, beats his drum during the Boys' Day Festival at the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii. Festivities yesterday also included hands-on activities and folk dancing. Today is Boys' Day. Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser

Boys of all ages had a chance to make their own fish prints, called gyotaku, by pressing paper onto the painted bodies of fish, and then to watch artist Naoki Hayashi demonstrate the technique he uses to make the prints into an art form.

"When I press paper onto an onaga, and then add red paint to match the color, it pops out, it swims," said Naoki, a diver and fisherman who has been making such prints since he was 11.

Naoki said Japanese fishermen created gyotaku prints about 100 years ago as a means of recording their prized catches.

"I found flying fish like these in the belly of a mahimahi when I cut it open," Naoki said of a pair of 12-inch winged creatures sailing over a piece of paper in one of his many framed prints on display.

He's printed and painted fish as big as 180-pound 'ahi, and says he has such respect for the ocean he will only use fish that can be eaten after being used to create art.

Across the center's lobby, sansei (third generation) Japanese Reid C. T. Yoshida was serving up his own version of gyotaku on ceramic bowls he shapes and glazes within hours of catching fish to press into the clay for his designs.

"It took me a year and a half to figure out the technique," said Yoshida. The son of a dentist and grandson of a carpenter, he earned a fine-arts degree at the University of Colorado and creates art when he is not at work as a Honolulu firefighter.

"I like to fish, I like to paint, and I like my job, but between the three I didn't have enough time to do them all," Yoshida said. "Then I came on the idea of doing gyotaku in a new way." He calls his art enterprise "A Touch of Clay," and he uses a secret recipe for the nontoxic black ink with which he makes the first impression, and the nontoxic paints that he uses to add color to the impression before glazing and firing the pieces.

The live fish were in the courtyard, in large plastic ponds brought to the center yesterday by members of the Hawai'i Goldfish and Carp Association.

"You've got to have the interest in koi, because the benefit of having koi is in watching them," said Vernon Wong, president of the association.

"It's only then that you can get the calming effect, and appreciate their beauty, their gracefulness, the lines of their fins and the shape and color of their patterns," Wong said.

Wong said it was the Chinese who first started collecting koi about 500 years ago. "They raised carp for food, and once in a while there would be a fish of a different color, and they would keep it as a pet, and the breeding began," he said.

He warned young fish fanciers yesterday that a 300-gallon pond or basin is a minimum to make sure that koi are not stunted as they grow, and urged anyone interested in the fish to join the association first to prepare themselves for the hobby. (Call Wong at 677-5887, or go to www.hawaiigoldfishandkoi.org.)

Reach Walter Wright at wwright@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8054.