I just learned that there is a special exhibit taking place at the Tokyo Museum of Maritime Science of a diorama of late Edo period Japanese boats. The exhibit will be in the museum lobby from April 29th through May 14th, 2017.
It has come to my attention that I haven’t posted much on Wasen Modeler lately. At the same time, I have a large collection of photos of Japanese boats and their models that I took while in Japan last September. So, I think it’s time to finally start organizing them and posting them here. These photos were taken in Tokyo, in Toba, and at the Hakusan Maru Museum on Sado Island. These locations are all in central Japan, and most of the subjects will probably also be from central Japan.
Boat repository at the Toba Seafolk Museum.
I plan on periodically posting photos of individual model or actual boats, or small groups of related items, particularly if I don’t have much information on them.
Displays at the Toba Seafolk Museum
I’ll probably focus first on those boat types that I know about and can explain. But, I have to warn you that there are far more types that I do not know about and can not explain. It’s all a learning process, and that’s what this site is really all about.
From the diorama at the Edo Tokyo Museum.
Be forewarned, perhaps by the photo examples you see here, than lighting conditions in Japanese museums are notoriously poor in order to help preserve the subjects, and my photography skills and equipment does not compensate well.
This is not a wasen project, but it is Japanese related, and I think the aesthetic is important to anyone who is interested in modeling wasen, so I’m re-blogging this from my ship modeling blog. And, yes, it’s not a ship modeling project either! But, I needed a simple project to distract me from my other work, and I had to write about it somewhere.
I’ve recently found myself spinning my wheels on the ship modeling front. This happens from time to time with my projects when I get a bit overwhelmed or stuck. My scratch model of a Japanese rice field boat, the Gifu Tabune, was one kind of distraction to work on. That took only a couple days, but there was a lot of thinking that went into that build, since it was from scratch, and I’m still learning a lot about Japanese traditional boats. The ideal would be a simple kit, where I can just build it and not spend a lot of time on it or have to put a lot of brain power into it, as I’m in short supply these days.
As it turns out, I’d purchased a collection of simple Woody Joe kits from Zootoyz. If you follow my blog at all, you’re already aware that I am…
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Boatbuilder, and my personal Japanese boatbuilding mentor, Douglas Brooks will soon be returning to Japan to begin working on the construction of an Ukaibune (鵜飼船), a cormorant fishing boat, in Gifu. In mid-May he will be working with Mr. Seichi Nasu, who may very well be the last builder of these famous Japanese boats.
The 85 year old Mr. Nasu has built over 700 boats of various types in his lifetime. But, unlike with Brooks’s past apprenticeships in Japan, Mr. Nasu will not be directly involved in the construction, and will instead direct, while Brooks provides the physical labor.
Ukaibune on the shore of the Nagara river. Image courtesy of Douglas Brooks.
I have had the good fortune of having been in many email exchanges with French author Jean-Pierre Mélis and our mutual friends in Japan for about the last year or so. Mr. Mélis has been writing a three part series of articles in Neptunia, the Journal of the Friends of the French National Maritime Museum.
The series explores different types of Japanese watercraft as depicted in Japanese woodblock prints. The journal is in French, but with modern translation tools, it’s not too difficult to read in English. This is how I was able to read the first issue, and it was a very interesting read. Plus, it was the first time I’d seen many of the prints.
It may seem odd that the subject of Japanese boats appears in a French journal, but it was Admiral Paris’s book Le Souvenirs de Marine, first published in 1888, with the most recent reprint that I know of being in 1962, that gives westerners the earliest detailed look at Japanese watercraft. A model based on this work also appears in the French National Maritime Museum, and is featured on the cover of the first issue above.
From Le Souvenirs de Marine
Mr. Mélis informed me the other day of the publication of his final article, which looks at the boats used to navigate the rivers and canals of Japan during the final years of the Shogun period.
If you are interested in reading the articles, you can purchase copies from the publisher’s website: http://www.aamm.fr/neptunia/derniers_numeros
Specifically, the issues are numbers 281, 283 and 285.
The articles should be interesting and informative, and I am looking forward to seeing the artwork as well.
It’s official! I heard from a fellow ship modeler who said he really enjoyed the first installment of my Higaki Kaisen article. I hadn’t received my author’s copy yet, and my own subscription expired a few months ago, so I went onto Seaways.com to renew. When I was there, I saw the ad for the magazine showing this month’s issue and, lo and behold, there was my Higaki Kaisen model on the cover.
It’s actually the second time the model has been on a magazine cover. The first time was on the cover the of Nautical Research Journal. But, it was really nice to see it on the new Ships in Scale. I have to admit, the photogenic aspect of the model has more to do with the interesting nature of the subject and the incredible work done on the kit’s development by the manufacturer, Woody Joe.
Still, I’m pretty proud of the model and of the article. I hope readers here will have a chance to read the article. More importantly, I hope more modelers will take an interest in building the kit and other Japanese boats.
Special thanks to all the people who’ve helped me with this article and in better understanding Japanese traditional watercraft including Douglas Brooks, Toshihiko Shibafuji, Masaki Tanimura, Norio Uriu, Masami Sekiguchi, Jean Pierre Mélis, Hiroyuki Kobayashi, Yukari Gojo of Woody Joe, and Kazunori Morikawa of Zootoyz, as well as supportive fellow ship modelers Don Dressel and Richard Rubinger, and a special thanks to Ed Von der Porten for all his editing help.
New Woody Joe temple and architecture kits just arrived from Zootoyz!
This week was like Christmas here, as a shipment of Japanese wooden model kits arrived from Zootoyz, my recommended Japanese online hobby dealer. Four model kits came, and none of them are ship model kits. I decided I needed some nice gift ideas, so I found a number of Woody Joe kits that I can build and present as gifts to my Japanese music teacher, and my family and friends.
I have a lot of ship modeling projects to work on, so I don’t expect to spend a lot of time working on these right away. But, half of these are very simple mini-architectural kits that Woody Joe lists as taking about 8 hours to complete. Perfect for a small weekend distraction!
Teahouse Mini-Architecture Kit
The kits are:
Japanese-style Inn Mini-Architecture…
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The sixth display of wasen models is now set up at the Japan Center Mall in the window of the Union Bank Community Room inside the East Mall building. The display will be up through the end of March and features the same models as before, but with the addition of my Kamakura Period Sea Boat or Umi-bune. Though the Umi-bune model is not quite complete, I figured it was far enough along for public display as an “in progress” model.
The display then consists of the Hacchoro, Higaki Kaisen, Yakatabune, Tosa wasen, and the Umi-bune. The main change in the display is the use of new folding pedestals I made. This makes transportation easier, as the new pedestals take much less room in my car.
My hope for future displays is to have a model of a Kitamaebune, which is very similar in appearance to the Higaki Kaisen, and to fix up my wasen boat shop diorama with the addition of a new partially planked boat under construction and a number of miniature tools and things.
I also hope to display the completed Umi-bune and finish up my Urayasu bekabune model and perhaps display it with the bekabune model that was given to me by the Urayasu Museum. Probably, the next display won’t be until sometime in the Fall.
For those interested in building any of the kit models, they are all presently available. The Tosa Wasen kit is only available direct from the manufacturer. You can see their website at thermal-kobo.jp, but you will have to email them to place your order. The Hacchoro, Yakatabune and Higaki Kaisen kits are all available from the Japanese online seller Zootoyz.jp. Their prices are reasonable, service is very good, and you won’t get gouged on shipping fees. Again, instructions for all these kits are in Japanese, but all but the Higaki Kaisen are pretty straight forward.
I just found out that Douglas Brooks has a number of copies of his book, The Tub Boats of Sado Island: A Japanese Craftsman’s Methods, available for sale.
This book is in Japanese, but includes a full english translation in the back with translated photo captions as well. It was published in 2003 by the Kodo Cultural Foundation and lists for $38.99 plus shipping from the Kinokuniya book store. However, they list it as out of stock.
The author with Mr. Koichi Fujii. Photo courtesy of Douglas Brooks.
You can get a copy now, inscribed by the author, for only $30 including shipping. Take advantage of this opportunity by emailing the author directly. Here’s a link to his contact page: http://www.douglasbrooksboatbuilding.com/contact.html.
If you didn’t know, these boats are called Taraibune (たらい舟), and were used on the Echigo coast of the Sea of Japan and on Sado Island. If you ever visit Sado Island, there are a couple places where you can take a ride in one and even try out using the front mounted oar. Douglas Brooks did his first traditional apprenticeship in Japan with Mr. Koichi Fujii, who was the last professional tub boat builder on Sado Island until his death in 1999.
Taraibune for tourists at Shukunegi village, Sado Island. Photo courtesy of Douglas Brooks
Learn more about Taraibune on Mr. Brooks’s website: http://www.douglasbrooksboatbuilding.com/taraibune.html
Today, I decided to make it easier to follow my wasen modeler posts on Facebook, without having to follow my other music, personal or political postings. Click the following link, and be sure to “Like” my page!
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Wasen Mokei 和船模型 