One of the handiest sources of online information for the wasen modeler is the online library of the Nippon Foundation, or the Nippon Zaidan Toshokan – 日本財団図書館. I’ve made great  use of this resource, but of course, it requires sufficient knowledge of the Japanese language. With my limited knowledge, it’s a bit like walking through a maze with no map and wandering through long dark corridors. But, when I do stumble across something, it can be a great find.

I don’t know the full extent of the library, but I have found some interesting information, photos, diagrams, and such. It is helpful that the site is easy to navigate using Google Translate, in which you can translate entire web pages in real time. But, you do have to start somewhere.

If you don’t know any Japanese, just open up Google Translate in a web browser page and copy the text from the Japanese site and paste into the translator. Here are some articles you can do this with. Note that some of these articles include some english text at the bottom, but the text I have read clearly is just a basic summary of some of the information on the page. The following articles came up when doing a search on wasen, or tradition Japanese boats, using the Japanese text, 和船.

Overview of Japanese Sailing Ships – This is from the Osaka Port Promotion Association. It appears to be a good primer on Japanese sailing vessels and their development. There is some great info here about coastal transports, how they were built, how and where they operated, etc. Great information about bezaisen or sengokubune: kitamaebune and higakikaisen.

A Japanese Boat from Start to Finish – This looks to be a log of the construction of a Japanese boat put together by the University of Tokyo (at least the log is). I haven’t read it all, but it begins with the gathering of lumber and follows construction through launch. I don’t know what type of boat it is yet, but it reminds me of the bekabune because of the flush seam between the upper and lower planks.

Maritime Science Museum – I’m not sure, but this appears to be a book, or maybe just a big article, on maritime science from the Maritime Science Museum, which is essentially closed for now (though there is a small annex that is open to the public with some limited displays). This is a GREAT resource that seems to cover the gamut of Japanese boats. With 36 web pages, it’s enough material to write dozens of posts.

Boat Building Handbook – Wow. I just saw this for the first time while writing this post. This is a major find. It’s like a boat building handbook. It covers later period boats, but primarily goes into a tremendous amount of fine detail on wasen construction of all types. This is a real find, again worthy of multiple posts. If you put your browser into a “reader” mode, you can export this as a 140-page pdf, making it a lot easier to search through. Lots of great diagrams.

Well, that should be enough material to keep you going for a while. While writing this, I’ve discovered so much that I never knew existed. This is pretty amazing. I’ll post a follow-up soon as I’ve just made a discovery that I need to look into before I say anything more.

Remember, if you don’t read Japanese, just copy the text and paste it into Google Translate. It’s not a perfect translation, but you can figure out the important stuff when combining with the illustrations.

Good luck!