Magic isn’t easy. And it can be downright dangerous at times.

In fact, some of the daring stunts John Hirokawa has pulled off in his long-running Magic of Polynesia show didn’t involve any trickery at all, just intricate planning and precise timing.

Hirokawa recalls when one of his early showstopping acts known as the Death Bed almost lived up to its name. In theory, the magician was supposed to have more than enough time to free himself before a flaming torch burned through the rope that kept the contraption from slamming shut on him. If something went wrong, the show — and maybe Hirokawa — would be over.

"You know how close I got sometimes? There were some close calls. That’s why I took it out. You’d be surprised how close things get sometimes," he said.

Hirokawa’s biggest trick of all may be conjuring a 25-year-and-counting run as a Waikiki showroom headliner. Few local entertainers can claim such longevity in an industry dependent on the changing tastes and demographics of Hawaii’s visitor market.

There’s Don Ho, who was the unchallenged king of Waikiki entertainment from 1964 until his death in 2007. The Society of Seven and its successor group, Society of Seven-Las Vegas, topped the bill at the Outrigger Main Showroom for more than 30 years, and Danny Kaleikini was the headline attraction at the old Kahala Hilton from 1967 until the hotel was sold in 1994.

Given the chance, Hirokawa is looking forward to many more years on stage.

"Right now I love what I do. Once a magician, always a magician," he said. "I’m an introvert. I don’t like to go out in crowds. I don’t like to be known as a magician, I don’t like to be known as an entertainer, I don’t like to talk about magic. But when I’m up there it’s my life. It’s really what gives me that sense of accomplishment."

The art of magic has been Hirokawa’s passion since he was first intrigued by it at age 6. He started taking lessons two years later and began working neighborhood birthday parties at $10 a show. His first "big-time gig" came a year later at an insurance company convention at the Sheraton Waikiki — for which he was paid $50.

In 1976 a 12-year-old Hirokawa opened for David Copperfield at the old C’est Si Bon showroom in the Pagoda Hotel.

"I did his matinees," Hirokawa recalled. "You cannot get any better of a mentor than him. He was 19 at the time."

One of the things that he learned from Copperfield was that magic could be more than "pulling a rabbit out of a hat."

"That triggered something in me," he said. "You can take magic that’s in your wildest imagination and take it wherever you want to take it."

Hirokawa made use of his time as a student at Leilehua High School to prepare for a career as a showroom musician. He studied dance — jazz, ballet, tap — and singing to develop his stage movements and learn how to integrate sound and music in his shows. From there he went to Leeward Community College to study economics, management and business organization.

Anticipating the changes that would bring more Asian tourists to Hawaii, Hirokawa said he approached show business entrepreneur Roy Tokujo of Cove Entertainment "for about five years, just begging him, begging him, begging him" for the opportunity to tap into the growing international market with a Las Vegas-style magic show that would transcend language barriers.

"Finally things started to materialize," Hirokawa said, when Tokujo got together with the Roberts Hawaii tour company to back a show, and when Don Ho left "the Dome."

At the time, the Dome, a landmark at the Hilton Hawaiian Village, was scheduled to be torn down in a few years, but until then it was available. Hirokawa got his chance to headline a showroom, debuting Magic of Polynesia on April 15, 1990. He was 25 years old.

To get the show established and prove himself to the visitor industry, Hirokawa did two shows a night, seven days a week, for two years.

"For two years I didn’t see the sun set," he said.

Eventually Hirokawa and Tokujo convinced the tour companies and other Waikiki power brokers that the young magician could headline a major Waikiki showroom and that there was a consistent audience for a big-scale magic act in Waikiki.

Hirokawa was at the Dome for eight years. In 1998 Roberts spent over $7 million building the Magic of Polynesia Showroom for him at the Beachcomber and then put another $2 million into the show itself.

"I think the challenge going forward is to reinvent," he says. "How do you reinvent yourself now? As a performer and as you get older, it’s a different physical situation. If I want to continue this, where do I go and what do I do, and how do I make it different? Copperfield is having the same kind of problem now."

In his early shows at the Dome and at the Beachcomber, Hirokawa would "magically" appear at the back of the room and then slide down a cable over the audience to the stage where he would continue the show. It was a dramatic stunt but dangerous. He began having rotator cuff problems, and if the braking mechanism didn’t work correctly, he could literally hit a wall at high speed. ("The audience loved it. They thought it was part of the show," he said.)

Pyrotechnics were written out of the show after a misfire started a fire in one of the stage curtains. It started out of sight, high up in the rigging, and had been burning for a while when Hirokawa sensed something was wrong, looked up and saw the flames.

"We had fire-retardant curtains but somehow it ignited. Balls of burning stuff were falling, and the curtain was engulfed in flames. It was a wall of fire. The audience thought it was part of the show at first, but then they could see something was wrong."

Quick work by the stage crew kept the fire contained.

Hirokawa’s big-scale illusions — making a full-size helicopter or luxury sports car disappear — never cease to awe. However, speaking as a magician rather than a showman, he said he also enjoys sleight-of-hand work one on one with members of the audience. He’ll take some borrowed rings and somehow link them together, or take a $10 bill, have the owner mark it, put the bill in a sealed envelope and then retrieve it from another object.

"That’s the kind of stuff that I love to do now because it’s very impromptu, and it varies from show to show," he said. "Just doing magic with no smoke and mirrors. Audiences are more jaded because they see everything on YouTube. The simple things make magic more real.

"I couldn’t figure that out at first, but it’s those type of things that resonate now because they’re so personal. It’s interactive and it’s ordinary."

Hirokawa said there’s no magic to how he’s been able to maintain his show business career and a fulfilling family life, crediting his wife of 23 years, Nadine, and their shared Christian faith. The couple were high school sweethearts and have three children.

"I always looked at that success situation as a partnership between me and her. I could never think it was me because she was there during the grinds and the tears and the sweat," Hirokawa said.