I just discovered that an acquaintance, Mr. Tomohiko Ogawa, a boatbuilder and artist in Japan, has set up a new wasen website about Traditional Japanese Wooden Boats. The site is primarily in Japanese, but does include some english language text to accompany most of the titles. You can find it here: https://traditionalwoodenboat.jpn.org/

This is mostly an overview of his own works, but he has done quite a bit. You may recall that he provided the information for me to model the Hasumibune, Ogura Pond boat.

He’s currently working on a full-sized version of this boat. Sadly, I don’t believe there any living boatbuilders that can clear up some of the questions about the construction of this boat type. After building this model, I have some thoughts as to how the full-sized boats were built, but I haven’t talked to him about it lately. However, he did mention my work on his website: https://traditionalwoodenboat.jpn.org/n-20220801/

You can also follow Ogawa-san’s work on Instagram here. Ω