General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Hula Girls (フラガール)

Hula Girls (フラガール) is a 2006 Japanese comedy-drama film directed by Lee Sang-il, based on the true story of the young women of a declining coal-mining town in Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture, who learned hula in the mid-1960s to help launch the Joban Hawaiian Center tourist resort¹. It was released in Japan on September 23, 2006, produced by Cine Qua Non, and went on to win Best Picture at the 30th Japan Academy Awards¹^•⁴.

Key fact	Detail
Original title	フラガール (Hura Gāru)
Director and screenplay	Lee Sang-il; screenplay by Lee Sang-il and Daisuke Habara¹
Japanese release	September 23, 2006; distributed by Cine Qua Non¹^•³
Setting	1965 (Showa 40), a coal-mining town in Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture⁵
Main cast	Yasuko Matsuyuki (Madoka Hirayama), Yu Aoi (Kimiko), Etsushi Toyokawa (Yojiro), Shizuyo Yamasaki, Sumiko Fuji, Ittoku Kishibe¹^•⁶
Music	Jake Shimabukuro, who also composed the main theme⁵
Top honors	Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actress at the 30th Japan Academy Awards (2007), plus the Audience Award⁴
Box office	$11.74 million (¥1.4 billion), among the top 20 domestic earners of 2006⁴

Spoilers

Story and setting

The film is set in 1965 in Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture, where the closure of the coal mines has pushed the town into crisis as Japan's energy policy shifts from coal to oil⁵^•⁷. To revive the local economy, the mining company proposes a large leisure facility, the Joban Hawaiian Center, built around the town's abundant hot springs, with a hula dance show as its main attraction⁵.

Local women are recruited as dancers, though most are complete amateurs who know nothing of hula; in the film's telling, the coal miners' daughters are familiar only with bon-odori festival dancing⁵^•⁸. Madoka Hirayama, a former professional dancer brought in from Tokyo, initially scorns the country girls but gradually regains her own lost passion as she trains them². The plan meets resistance from union families in the community, and the drama centers on Kimiko, whose mother opposes her dancing, and on the dancers' growth toward the resort's grand opening⁹.

Production

Lee Sang-il, a Korea-born Japanese director whose earlier films included 69: Sixty Nine and Scrap Heaven, joined the project about a year before production after the Cine Qua Non producer offered it to him; the plan to film the Hawaiian Center's true story had been in development for two to three years¹⁰^•⁸. The screenplay is credited to Lee and Daisuke Habara, and the score and main theme were written by the Hawaiian ukulele player Jake Shimabukuro¹^•⁵.

The cast pairs established actors with the young dancers: Yasuko Matsuyuki as the teacher Madoka, Etsushi Toyokawa as Kimiko's brother Yojiro, and Yu Aoi as Kimiko, with Shizuyo Yamasaki, Sumiko Fuji, and Ittoku Kishibe in supporting roles¹^•⁶. Lee said in interviews that an early version of the script ran to nearly three hours and included a romance that he ultimately cut¹⁰.

Reception and awards

Japanese honors. At the 30th Japan Academy Awards, held on February 16, 2007, Hula Girls was named Best Picture of 2006 and took Best Director for Lee, Best Screenplay for Lee and Habara, and Best Supporting Actress for Yu Aoi, from 13 nominations; it also won the Audience Award⁴^•¹¹. It won Best Film at the Blue Ribbon Awards, chosen by film journalists from Japan's major sports newspapers, and Best Film and Best Actress at the 80th Kinema Junpo Awards⁴^•¹². Yu Aoi collected supporting-actress and actress prizes across the Hochi, Mainichi, Blue Ribbon, and Yokohama awards¹².

Commercial and international performance. The film grossed $11.74 million (¥1.4 billion) during its autumn 2006 theatrical run, placing it among the top 20 domestic earners of the year, and it was selected as Japan's official entry for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film⁴. It premiered internationally at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival¹, and on October 30, 2006 it closed the Hawaii International Film Festival with a screening at the Hawaii Theatre in Honolulu¹³.

Critical response abroad was more divided. On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 56% Tomatometer from 18 reviews against an 83% audience score, and its Metacritic Metascore is 53¹⁴^•¹⁵. Reviewers repeatedly compared it to British mining-community comedies such as The Full Monty, Brassed Off, and Billy Elliot, with some critics finding the formula predictable and others calling it an endearing crowd-pleaser¹⁴^•¹⁶.

The true story behind the film

The film dramatizes the founding of the Joban Hawaiian Center (now Spa Resort Hawaiians) in Iwaki, a project launched by the Joban coal mine as the pits closed during the energy revolution of the 1960s⁵^•¹⁷. Hawaii was reportedly the foreign destination Japanese most wanted to visit at the time, and the company planted palm trees indoors, a tropical touch that the cold Fukushima winters made difficult to sustain¹⁷. The center's main building and rest house opened on January 15, 1966¹³.

The film fed back into the place it depicts. After its release, annual attendance at the resort reached a record 1.61 million visitors in fiscal 2007¹⁷. Following the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, which damaged the Iwaki coast, the resort organized a nationwide tour, the "Hula Girls National Kizuna Caravan," its first in 46 years, invoking both the coal-town hardships of the film's era and hopes for disaster recovery¹³. A 4K remastered edition has since been released by Gaga Corporation².

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Comedy and romantic films (individual works) › Comedies of 2005 to 2006

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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