It’s been developing slowly over the years, but The Rope Tokyo, has been updating their website with an increasing amount of material on traditional Japanese ships and boats and their models. Over the years, they’ve added some material from presentations given at their regular meetings. But, more recently, they’ve added a section showing types of ships and boats, based on model built by members, as well as a section showing models of boats preserved at the Ota ward local museum (a collection that I was actually involved in discovering).

Model of a Normeri-bune in the Ota ward city museum. Photo courtesy of The Rope Tokyo.

Most recently, the website now has a section showing some incredible models of historical Japanese boat and ship types built by the president of The Rope Hiroshima, Mr. Isao Tajima. The models are all between 1/20 and 1/35 scale, so they are on the larger side. They are also built in what are traditionally ship modeler’s woods of cherry wood and Castello boxwood.

A couple of Mr. Tajima’s models are based on the drawings recorded by Lieutenant Armand Paris during the mid-to-late 19th century. I have built the same two models myself, so I was particularly interested in Mr. Tajima’s work on these two models, but all his work is truly incredible and deserve a close look

Please check out Mr. Tajima’s work here: https://theropetokyo-en.jimdofree.com/japanese-ships-1/tajima-isao-work-collection/

For the whole section on Japanese ships and boats on The Rope Tokyo english language website, go here: https://theropetokyo-en.jimdofree.com/japanese-ships-1/

It’s good to see traditional Japanese watercraft on the website of The Rope, which has devoted so much of their work to Western ships. I wish Mr. Tajima’s work was available for me to study from when I started building wasen models. I can only hope that word of my own work and interest in traditional Japanese watercraft might have influenced some of the modelers in Japan to take the subject more seriously. Ω