Monthly Archives: November 2019

丸子船 – Marukobune Model by Mr. Masami Sekiguchi

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When I visited Japan in 2016, I had the pleasure of having dinner with a couple Japanese ship modelers in Tokyo. One of these gentlemen is Mr. Masami Sekiguchi of the Yokohama  Sailing Ship Modelers Club. We’ve been regularly in touch via email as he has helped to answer questions for me on Japanese traditional boats, architecture, and anything else I need help with from Japan.

Mr. Masami Sekiguchi, left, visiting a display of wasen models built by Mr. Yukio Nakayama, right.

It was he and the other gentleman I had dinner with in Tokyo, Mr. Norio Uriu, who went and investigated a collection of models at the regional museum in the Ota ward, that I discovered when researching a spreadsheet I found online regarding wasen model dispositions. They took many dozens of photos documenting the models, which were in storage at the museum.

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とやまの和船 – Book on Traditional Japanese Boats of Toyama Prefecture

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The first treasure of my recent Japanese book buying binge arrived late last week. The book is in Japanese and is called Toyama no Wasen, which means Toyama’s traditional Japanese boats.

This is a beautiful book and it is loaded with drawings. I flipped through it and counted about 30 boats detailed in drawings, though some drawings offer more details than others. Also, some of the rice field boats are little more than floating wooden tubs that are pushed or pulled through the fields by the farmer.

This book appears to be a 2011 publication by the Himi City Museum. I found my copy through Yahoo! JAPAN Auctions. I haven’t seen it listed even on Amazon Japan. I suspect it normally purchased directly from the Himi City Museum and, as it’s a museum publication, isn’t going to be found anywhere else.

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Zutta Tenma in 1/10 scale – Himi Rice Field Boat – Part 2

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The Zutta Tenma is a small Tabune, or rice field boat, from Toyama prefecture. My model is based on a drawing that I got from Douglas Brooks, which is very similar to one he used when he built one in 2016.

Photo of the drawings used by Douglas Brooks to build a Zutta Tenma in Himi in 2016. Photo courtesy of Douglas Brooks.

This drawings varies only slightly from one I used, which I believe was published in a museum book on boats of Toyama prefecture. I managed to find a couple of these books on Yahoo! JAPAN Auctions and used my Buyee.com account to purchase it. This, by the way, is a very useful buying service, which allows you to view products in english and ship them to a Japanese address, where they handle the international shipping for you. It’s very easy to use and gives you access to lots of great stuff for sale in Japan.

One of two books on traditional Japanese boats of Toyama prefecture that I just purchased.

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Douglas Brooks Building Honryousen

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American Boatbuilder Douglas Brooks has been studying traditional Japanese boatbuilding techniques from master Japanese craftsmen for more than 25 years. He recently completed building a boat in Niigata prefecture under the guidance of Mr. Nakaichi Nakagawa. The boat is a simple river boat called a Honryousen.

Joining him in Japan is Nina Noah, Director of Student Affairs and Outreach at the Apprenticeshop, a non-profit organization located in Rockland, ME, dedicated “to inspiring personal growth through craftsmanship, community, and traditions of the sea.” She is also working on the boats and helping to document the work being done.

The following video was put together interviewing Mr. Nakagawa and documenting the work on this lovely boat.

 

 

Japanese Book Buying Binge

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While I have plenty of projects and potential projects to work on, I seem to be hungry for new material. Recently, I was hunting for the source of a pdf copy of an out of print book that I had originally obtained from the Nippon Foundation Library a few years ago.

But, try as I might, I couldn’t find it anywhere. In fact, most of my saved links to the site appear to be broken. I hunted for the pdf book, but couldn’t manage to locate it. However, I did manage to run across an actual physical copy on a Japanese auction site. Now, I don’t actually need the book, since I have the pdf file, but it’s always nice to have a physical resource.

The book I found was one on the history of the Takasebune, a term for the various types of shallow-draft transports found on the rivers across Japan. Watch for an upcoming post on researching and reconstructing the Takasebune of the Tone river system.

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Looking for Yodogawa river craft detail

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I haven’t tried this yet with this blog. Normally, I just post what’s new and what I’m working on, etc. But, this time I’m going to try asking for help…

Some Yodogawa 淀川 river boats and some sea boats in the Osaka area show a kind of stern structure that is different from other boat types, but I can’t quite make out the details from the few drawings and photos I’ve seen.

In another case, there is a model of a river gozabune from the Tokyo Museum of Maritime Science. I have some photos of it, but again, nothing that shows the stern in detail. Again, this is a boat from the Yodo river.

This is a beautiful model for which I have a nice drawing, but there is no scale and again I don’t really understand the construction of the stern.

Now, I could take a guess based on the drawings I have, but this is a very well known and often viewed model, so I’m hoping someone out there has some better closeup photos of it. Also, I need the exact length of model or of something specific on the model, as well as the scale, to be able to determine correct measurements.

There might be other models besides this specific one that shows stern features in detail, if you have any info, please contact me here through the comments section. Thank you!

 

Zutta Tenma in 1/10 scale – Himi Rice Field Boat

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In early 2016, Douglas Brooks was in Himi, Japan, to build a small Tabune, or rice field boat, known locally as a Zutta Tenma. He is back in Japan now, on his way back to Himi, this time to build a general purpose boat that I’m told is simply called a Tenmasen.

As part of a fund raising plan, I’d agreed to build a couple models for fund raising purposes for him for a nominal fee. This will happen some time in the next 6 months, probably, as I wait for more details on the boat’s construction.

Himi Tenmasen

In the meantime, Douglas was also in Niigata prefecture, where he worked on a very simple river boat which has been called a Nouninawase or Itaawase, or as I just learned today, a Honryousen.

Douglas Brooks caulking a seam on a Honryousen

I’m not sure if it’s going to happen, but Douglas was interested in getting a model of the Honryousen he just built, so I’m waiting on some dimensions on that too.

But, while I’m waiting for information on those, I decided that I really haven’t done all that much in the way of a model of a boat that he’s built, and I’m about to build two. So, I figured I’d better get a head start and get in some practice by building a Zutta Tenma model.

Zutta Tenma were boats used in and around the rice fields of the region. This one is a smaller type and has a very simple design. My understanding is that these were not built by boat builders, per se, but by builders who specifically built these tabune, or rice field boats.

Zutta Tenma in a museum in Himi, Japan

The boat is only about 12 feet long, so I’m going with a 1/10-scale model. At this scale, the model will be about 14 inches long. This also allows me to put in the mortise detail, which is hard for me to do at smaller scales. It also keeps the model from seeming too simple. Unfortunately, most of the interesting detail is on the underside of the boat, so you won’t be able to see it unless the model is displayed upside down.

For the most part, I think the boats look best on a simple wooden base. But, a mirrored base, would allow a viewer to see the bottom of the boat as it sits upright. I’ll have to think about this.

You can read more about Douglas Brooks’s 2016 Zutta Tenma project on his blog here: http://blog.douglasbrooksboatbuilding.com/2016/02/the-rice-field-boat.html

 

9th Japanese Boat Models Display, October 2019 – Extended

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Setting up and taking down my display of Japanese boats takes a lot of time and effort, and when I don’t have the display up, I have to have a place to put all the models at home. So, a couple days ago, I contacted Union Bank and arranged to have my Japanese boats display extended for an additional two weeks.

If you happen to be in the San Francisco Bay Area sometime before November 15, 2019, you can still see my display in the Union Bank Community Room window of the Japan Center’s East Mall (Mikyako Mall), which is located between Geary in Post near Buchannan street.

In the future, I’d like to make more instructional, perhaps focussing on a certain type of boat or certain region and how they’re used or how they’ve evolved. Unfortunately, that’s going to take a lot of work, lots of study, and more models than I have now.

I figure I’ll probably have to stick with this display as it is at least one more time. Next time, I should be able to include the Kitamaebune and it would be nice to have both that and a Higaki Kaisen model shown together, but that means I have to not only get the Kitamaebune finished, but I have to build another Higaki Kaisen as well.

Well, one thing at a time. Ω