Traditional Boats - East and West - at Douglas Brooks Boatbuilding

Boatbuilding Workshops

2011-11-21T16:15:00.000-08:00

Some old and future news: Last September I taught a boatbuilding workshop for the first time in awhile. In fact the last time I taught was in 2007 at the Wooden Boat Center in Takashima, Japan, so I guess it was fitting that I went to the equally exotic locale of Pemaquid, Maine. I taught a one-week workshop at the Carpenters Boatshop.

I took this photo of the Boatshop a few years ago when I was there for a lecture. Yes, its winter. And yes, there are nice summers in Maine as well.

The Boatshop takes about a dozen apprentices a year for a nine-month course. The main boat used as a teaching tool is a nice bent-frame, lapstrake dinghy, the Joel White-designed Catspaw.

In this one-week workshop we built a fairly straightforward flatiron dinghy. We lofted the boat's lines and several students made half models in the evenings. We also stressed sharpening hand tools, power tool safety, wood selection, steam bending among our elements of boatbuilding.

We built the mould setup the afternoon after we lofted the lines.

A detailed look at our lofting, showing our stem and stem rabbet.

I decided we would plank the sides of our dinghy lapstrake. This gave students a chance to learn how to spile lapstrake planking and cut the gains and bevels required in this type of planking. It also gave us a chance to learn how to use copper rivets to fasten the planks along the laps.

The bottom was cross-planked, which is carvel construction, so students got to learn how to plane a caulking bevel as well as some other elements of flat-bottomed construction.

Traditional caulking is a "must learn" skill and the bottom of the dinghy provided lots of seams, giving everyone a chance to practice caulking. We used both caulking wheels as well as caulking irons.

I found the lines for this dinghy in a reprint of Kunhardt's book. Its a really lovely little boat, with the emphasis on LITTLE. I plan on enlarging the lines before I build her again.

This is as far as we got and the week ran out. A Boatshop volunteer painted the dinghy after we left.

The students were very pleased with the class, as was the Boatshop. I will be on their Summer Schedule for 2012 so keep an eye out for this course sometime next August. This link shows my class for last year but after January I am sure this page will show next year's courses:

http://www.carpentersboatshop.org/summer.html

I am also scheduled to teach this class at Country Workshops in September of 2012. Please pass news of this course along and think about taking one of them yourself!

http://countryworkshops.org/woodenboat.html

Japan Times article

2011-11-21T15:24:00.000-08:00

In yet another throwback to my sabani project in Okinawa, a feature article about me appeared in the Japan Times this fall. The author had met me two years earlier in Okinawa and was finally able to get an article in the JT. It was nice to see and I appreciate all his hard work. A few weeks later I appeared live on his NHK radio show, via Skype to his studio in Tokyo.

Here is a link to the article:

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/fl20110917a1.html

Sabani Update

2011-10-27T07:47:00.000-07:00

After much procrastinating, I have turned what was formerly the blog I kept while building the sabani in Okinawa to now a general blog about my work. In the two year interim, various interesting boat-related things have happened, so I will begin by working through a backlog of material on various subjects.

The first still involves the sabani. Just recently the JapanTimes did a very nice article about my work in Okinawa, written by Mick Corliss, an American writer living in Tokyo. I had met Mick once, briefly, several years ago and we stayed in touch. He decided to take his family for a New Year’s holiday to Okinawa and traveled all the way to Iejima to see me.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/fl20110917a1.html

The sabani itself was transferred to the Museum of Maritime Science (Funenokagakukan) but that institution recently closed its doors. A rebuilding of the museum had been planned but is now on hold due to the tsunami recovery.

In Okinawa the sabani races continue. This year’s race was rescheduled due to an early typhoon, and the later start reduced the number of boats by almost half. In the end 27 teams participated. Thanks to Mr. Noby Kobayashi for these photographs.

Latest news

2010-03-18T07:38:00.000-07:00

I will be giving a lecture in Brattleboro, VT this Saturday, March 20th at 2pm at the Brooks Memorial Library on my research work in Japan. Sorry for the late notice about this to this blog:

http://www.asianculturalcentervt.org/html/brooks.htm

If you think that a talk about my work would be of interest to your community, museum or school, please feel free to get in touch with me. I am happy to discuss a presentation. In Vermont my talks are supported by the Vermont Humanities Council Speaker's Bureau, which funds honorariums for qualified institutions.

Home Again

2010-02-12T12:03:00.000-08:00

I promised additional blog postings even though the boat was built, but jet lag and getting back into the swing of things after two and a half months away took a bit more time than I thought. In the time since I last posted my wife joined me in Okinawa for a week of travel in the southernmost islands of the archipelago, and then five days in Kyoto with trips to Kobe University to meet some students building boats, and a trip to the National Museum of Ethnology.

After I left Iejima the shipment of the boat to Tokyo was finally arranged and a proper launching ceremony was held. I should soon be getting photographs of the event which I will post here.

In this post I wanted to share some images of historic sabani I saw during my last travels in Okinawa. They include two sabani on display at the Okinawan Prefectural Museum of History in Naha, the capitol city; two boats I found in the tiny, tiny village of Funauki on Iriomote Island, and the boat in the small museum on Taketomi Island. As bad luck would have it, we had just part of one day on Ishigakijima, where the museum has several sabani, but it was a Monday and the museum was closed.

In an earlier posting I showed the stone anchor that Shimojo san's son made for our boat, but at the Prefectural Museum they had this style anchor, which Shimojo san told me actually was the type he made early in his career.

This is by far the most interesting boat I saw after leaving Iejima. This sabani is a dugout, made entirely from a single log (that's a more typical sabani in the background). But what you see in this boat is the development of the sabani shape. I had assumed that the sabani as I built it was a refinement over the dugout, but in fact the dugout sabani were much closer to later sabani in terms of shape than to what we normally think of as a dugout.

This small (very small) sabani I found in a tiny museum in a tiny village called Funauki, Iriomote Island, a place only accessible by boat.

This boat has these stabilizers at the stern, and they were clearly a later addition to the hull. I saw these on all the powered sabani that I found, but this was the only one I found on an unpowered sabani.

The museum had this photo of the "good old days." The photo was dated 1950.

Looking at the bus in the background I would date this photo from the 1970's. It was this decade that the wooden fishing sabani quickly disappeared.

This sabani was sitting outside and from its decorations was used as a festival boat. It had an engine bed so it was probably formerly a fishing boat. Sadly, it has rotted completely through from exposure.

I said that Funauki was small and I meant it. THIS is the fire department!

On Taketomi Island their museum had one small sabani, about twelve feet long, fully rigged. Those anchors at the stern are just like what was made on Iejima. The other hull behind the sabani is a Polynesian dugout that was found adrift by some fishermen from Taketomi, very symbolic of the maritime influences from the South Pacific.

Sayonara

2010-01-21T22:22:00.000-08:00

After two months of work it was finally time to leave Iejima. The sabani is destined to be shipped to the Museum of Maritime Science in Tokyo and Shimojo san felt that a launching ceremony was most appropriate just before the boat left. Since the museum had yet to finalize shipping, I could not stay and see the ceremony (thought I interviewed Shimojo san about exactly what he would do). Hopefully the wife of the U.S. Army sergeant in charge of the island's detachment will be able to attend and photograph the event for me, and I will be sure to post something here about it.

I was invited by a group of sabani sailors down to the capitol city for a dinner and a look at some sabani and I was given two liters of real shark liver oil to take back to Shimojo san. He applied it to the boat over the tempura soybean oil we had used. These final photos show that finish. It was taking a long time to dry and it did NOT smell very good!

Shimojo san finished the bailer (called yutui in the local dialect) and put a coat of lacquer on it.

Shimojo san's son Tomio san took a large coral stone and carved an anchor.

Me with Shimojo san, his wife and two of his children at the ferry port just before I boarded.

Waving goodbye from my last landfall, a Japanese tradition to see guests off at the point of departure. I wish Shimojo san and his family the very best of health. The last bit of local dialect I learned was a phrase that goes: "Since we have met we are now friends." Shimojo san an his family exemplified those words and I cannot thank them enough for their generosity and kindness.

Thanks as well to the Center For Wooden Boats in Seattle; the Asian Cultural Council of New York City; and the Nippon Foundation and Museum of Maritime Science of Tokyo for their support of this work. I will have more postings soon about sabani, including some photos of a very intriguing boat I saw in the Okinawan Prefectural Museum of History in Naha City. So for those interested in sabani there is more to come here.

History Revisited

2010-01-14T03:59:00.000-08:00

I don't think I've ever put two posts up in one day, so if you haven't looked at the blog in awhile be sure to keep reading below for my previous posting from this afternoon.

Today our volunteer showed me a book about the wartime history of the island and some of the photographs illustrated things I had mentioned in earlier posts about the War and the tankobune, or "tank boats" that local fishermen in Okinawa made from US Air Force scrap.

The US military evacuated the island's inhabitants following the battle and did not let them return to Iejima until about three years after the end of the War.

This photo shows the Japanese military runways, which were the prize that the Americans were after.

However, the US quickly enlarged the operation into a major airbase used for the bombing of mainland Japan. Having lived here looking at this its almost inconceivable how great a part of the island was transformed.

Under the wing of these aircraft are aluminum drop tanks: extra fuel to extend the fighter's range which could be dropped when they were empty or got into a dogfight. It was these tanks that local fishermen converted to fishing boats. You can see Mt. Gusuku in the background.

A photo of a US aircraft on the runway, with drop tanks, the local mountain in the background.

The link to my earlier posting about these unique boats is at this address:

http://thesabaniproject.blogspot.com/2009/12/tankobune.html

The other bit of history is that the Emperor's official letter of surrender was flown to Iejima by a flight of Japanese bombers. Here is a photo showing American soldiers crowded around one of the arriving planes. The Japanese were ordered to paint green crosses on the planes to mark them. From Iejima the surrender was flown by American aircraft to the US General Staff.

A photo showing two of the Japanese pilots being led away by MP's. The day after the delivery the Japanese planes were allowed to fly back to Tokyo. Note the pornographic art painted on the side of the Jeep.

The grim-faced delegation that delivered the letter of surrender. Generals, I suppose, and perhaps a diplomat in civilian clothes.

Post Construction

2010-01-13T20:56:00.000-08:00

Surprising how many people have emailed me asking what I am doing with my time on the island now that the boat is done. Well, given how many days I've worked really the only sightseeing I did was on my after-work runs, and I was able to reach just about all the island's corners that way, but I've now had the time to see just about everything there is to see.

The last two days have been interesting. I met a couple from Sweden walking down my street in foul weather gear and rubber boots. They had just tied up their 36-foot sailboat in the harbor. They are currently circling the Pacific Rim on their way around the world. When I told them about the sabani they were eager to see it, so yesterday morning I took them to the shop. Moments later Shimojo san's daughter, the island's only kindergarden teacher, showed up with a field trip of all the island's kindergardeners. We all went inside and the school principal played the Okinawan shamisen, called the sanshin, for us.

Later that afternoon I ran into the sergeant in charge of the local US Marine detachment on the island. When he heard what I was doing here he asked if he could bring his men by, so I went back over this morning to show them the boat. They left one soldier behind to guard the fort, literally. At one time a US Air Force detachment on Okinawa had a sabani and raced it, but that group was disbanded and their boat was sold to a Japanese team.

We also made the paper today, the Ryukyu Shimpo:

http://ryukyushimpo.jp/news/storytopic-5.html

And the varnish had dried on our mast rest, which Shimojo mounted on the bow. It is held in place with a cord.

After saying goodbye to the Swedes in the harbor I discovered some fiberglass "sabani" under construction! The man making them told me that they were for kids to paddle during festivals.

The harbor has some interesting kitsch, like its public restroom...

...and the viewing platform.

The bailer is also done, Shimojo san having signed and varnished it.

I will never be able to cut a Clorox bottle in half again for a bailer and not feel completely ashamed.

Several comments and questions were left with my last posting, and to answer one, unfortunately I will not get to sail this boat. It is destined to be shipped to the Museum of Maritime Science in Tokyo to become part of their permanent collection. And Shimojo san has said he feels that any kind of ceremony should be conducted just before the boat leaves, and shipping hasn't been scheduled yet, so I may miss out on this too. Having helped build the boat I certainly wish someone could sail it, and perhaps the museum in Tokyo will try. There are some people in Japan trying to convince the museum to actually ship this sabani to boat shows around the world for display, another idea I heartily endorse. I will keep this blog active as I write my book and complete drawings, so hopefully I can have good news for readers about how this sabani is used, and maybe even let you know where you might see it outside Japan.

Tomorrow the man who is making our sail is coming to the island. I learned that he is soaking the cotton in real shark liver oil as a preservative. I also just recently heard someone claim that in the old days sails were soaked in pigs blood as a preservative, but I am not sure about that. The traditional sails here were a tanbark kind of color, and I guess it was usually shark liver oil. I will try to confirm all this tomorrow.

I also learned from Shimojo san yesterday that the small mast that was sometimes stepped in the bow of the boat was about 2/3rds the height of the mainmast, which is 2/3rds the length of the boat. He said that the sail shape of the jib was just a reduced version of the mainsail, and he said this auxiliary sail was only flown in light winds. So it clearly wasn't really like a jib; that is, slotting the main to increase its efficiency.

As for the tempura oil, I estimate about five gallons have been used on the boat inside and out. The cedar just keeps soaking it up, and the pine, despite how hard a wood it is, is an amazing sponge. At any time the boat could be toweled completely dry to the touch, and there is no smell. Remember though, in Japan small boats even today are pulled out of the water at the end of each day. I don't think that this would be a finish that could be left immersed for long periods.

Finished!

2010-01-12T03:18:00.000-08:00

Time seems to have taken on a strange quality the last week or so. I had two visitors from Tokyo over the last four days and it seems as though the first one was here a month ago. But in the midst of it all it seemed as though suddenly the boat was finished. And it is! The owner of a Shimojo san-built racing sabani in Itoman City is making the sail and it was decided that the material for our mast was too wet (and bent besides) so that part of the rig is still a work in progress.

It also feels as though I haven't posted to this blog in a long time. I will post here a selection of photos since we went back to work after New Years (on January 4th) and caption them. I will be here another week and no doubt find interesting things to blog about. Then I will keep readers posted as to the progress of writing my monograph about building this boat, preparing drawings, etc.

The subject of a launching ceremony is still up in the air, but if it happens and I see it, be assured I will post something here about it.

One of the jobs I was given was stripping the bark from a local cedar for our mast. I was given an old meat cleaver to do this. The drawknife, by the way, is completely unknown to Japanese boat builders, to the point where most have no idea what the tool is. Japanese barrel makers seem to be the only craftsmen who use this tool. The Japanese also have no native tool like the spokeshave.

Shimojo san determining where to cut the after beam out of a chunk of chage, the wood used to make the huundu fastenings. He would have used Okinawan pine, an amazingly dense wood, which we had used for the mast partners, but he didn't have enough of this material left.

Our rubrails are made of imported apetong. Shimojo san's son Tomio san is shown here nailing them to the planking.

We worked slowly down the hull, bending and nailing the rails. Their main function is to form a rubrail so that the handle of the paddles does not wear the soft cedar planking when paddling.

A cap made of cedar topped the stem transom.

Shimojo san fitted an intermediate beam, which was tenoned and fit in blocks that lay against the planking. The beam was inserted into one side then lowered down into the oversized tenon on the other side...

... then Shimojo drove it down tight using a bar wedged under one of our temporary beams...

... finally he wedged the tenon, which was cut off flush with the blocking.

Here is a look at the mast partners and the midships beam.

And a glimpse at the bow, showing the fastenings. Later this too got apetong rubrails.

I was put to work fitting and installing the thwarts in the boat. In the old days an eight meter sabani might have four to six fishermen. Shimojo san said that thwarts were once made of lashing together one inch diameter pieces of bamboo into a kind of rough mat. He added that this kind of seat was very uncomfortable to sit on, but fishermen didn't have much time to sit.

Our final two days the shop was like Santa's workshop, with Shimojo san finishing the beams, Tomio san working on the mast and rails, and me fitting thwarts.

Tomio san then took the job of shaping the mast.

Our last day of work my friend Tominaga san came from Tokyo. Here he is giving business cards to Shimojo san, his wife and oldest daughter.

Detail at the bow. The small curved beam is handy for attaching a line, but in earlier days this was actually a partner for a very small mast that was sometimes stepped in the bow. A small sail flown here slotted the wind, improving the efficiency of the main sail.

And now some shots of the finished boat, with a fresh coat of tempura oil (soybean based).

Shimojo san's bailer is a piece of sculpture in itself. He said that the knowledge of these is even rarer than that about sabani. Right after the War fishermen began using US Army helmets for bailers so these wooden bailers haven't been seen since then. Helmets then gave way to plastic buckets. Bailing was always important (the curve on the bottom of this bailer matches the curve in the bottom of our boat) because not only did sabani tip over, but sometimes fishermen intentionally tipped them over, riding out storms from underneath the hull. Knowing how to efficiently bail the boat was essential for fishermen. Today on Iejima an annual sabani race using three ceremonial boats (all built by Shimojo san) requires that each team paddle out of the harbor, then capsize their boat, then right and bail it before returning to the finish.

New Years

2010-01-05T01:38:00.000-08:00

Back to work now after our holiday. I just received this link to a very pleasant video showing a small sabani out sailing. Please give it a look: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qmb-3FQtgoI

We had six days off for New Years, one of the biggest holidays in Japan. After over forty-one days of work out of the last forty-three I was ready. I stayed here on the island except for one day trip to the big aquarium on the main island and the museum of Polynesian boats next to it.

Our boat got decorated with a sprig of cedar and bamboo. Also, Shimojo san believed that it was important at New Years to give the shop a complete cleaning and while I swept every corner he organized all his tools.

While here I finished measuring two old sabani that are held in a private museum and the town of Iejima. I was also taken to see a large, powered sabani owned by a friend of the owner of the guest house where I am staying.

This is an interesting boat, entirely plank-built with no hollowed parts. Its very small but the fastenings are a combination of huundu and edge nails. Luckily you only need half a boat intact to do a lines-taking and the port side was complete. It had exactly half a transom!

In a small port at the west end of the island I was shown this one old sabani (about forty years old) that rests amidst a variety of fiberglass boats. It's now a pleasure boat. The man who showed it to me claimed that in the old days fishermen would paint their boats with pigs blood. That may have been more symbolic than useful, as my teacher and others have told me that in the old days every family raised a pig for slaughter specifically at New Years. Perhaps fishermen came up with this symbolic use for the blood.

Compared to what I've been building this boat seemed like a monster. It has an engine room amidships and is much, much beamier than our boat, which represents a purely sailing/paddling type. Some of the features that were added to sabani after engines became available were grown frames and the added plank to increase freeboard.

One little detail I noticed were these huundu and some kind of seam compound repairing a crack in the planking.

And one of my teacher's fiberglass boats was in the harbor.

For three days about half the fishing fleet was decorated with special flags and sprigs of cedar and/or bamboo. The colorful flags are asking for safety and good catches in the New Year. I've heard comments that flying the Japanese battle flag (the one with the rays) is considered controversial, though one friend believes that the association is with the Japanese Navy, and therefore significant for fishermen. If any readers have ideas about this please leave a comment.

Comments From a Reader

2009-12-31T03:26:00.000-08:00

I met Mr. Kiyo Shirado when he was visiting his hometown of Iejima. He now lives in Seattle. After reading my blog entry on the tankobune (boats made from American Air Force drop tanks, see my earlier blog posting entitled Tankobune) he wrote me the following, with photos:

Hi Douglas
Thank you for your E-mail, as you know I commented on your blog about fishing with a tank guni (boat). Here are several pictures attached from when I was in IE-JIMA at the end of Novmber to December. My brother usually keeps a tankobune at shube beach but relocated to Ishayara. I remember I was 12 years old when I started fishing with my father in Tankoguni (same size as the ones showing in your blog pictures). Right before the sunset we would carry nylon net sets from the beach to the reef overnight then early next morning (before I would go to school) pick up the net. Back then there were a lot of fish. My mom would give them away to neighbors or go house to house to sell fish.

Douglas, I have a lot of interesting stories about wooden boats and IE-JIMA CHU(people) who moved overseas.

kiyo

A Day in the Life on Iejima

2009-12-30T03:52:00.000-08:00

My days start before dawn. The sun doesn't come up until about 7 am and I am generally up at 6 making coffee in the guest house kitchen. Iejima Guest House is a cute, clean, friendly and cheap place to stay; I highly recommend it. The other guests besides me have been three construction workers who were here when I arrived in mid-November and just left. Occasionally another guest will stay for a night or two but this is off season for Okinawa, so things are quiet.

I have a three mat room, so its about 6' by 9'. Most of the other rooms are just two mats and there are bunk beds with curtains in the hallway that qualify as dormitory living. There are also two small outbuildings that have larger rooms with beds.

Putting on my jiko tabi is the last thing I do before heading out the door. These are traditional toe shoes worn by construction workers. I've come to really like them, though the people who notice them can't believe they were available in my size (12-13, or 30 cm).

The guest house is on one of the main roads here and as I head out for the five minute walk to the shop the street is generally pretty empty. That's the post office on the left and our local slot machine parlor on the right.

I head past a little cattle ranch where they are raising beef calves. The breed is called wagyu. Japanese agriculture happens on a very, very small scale, generally. The sugar cane fields on the outskirts of town are the largest agricultural operations I have ever seen in Japan and even those are just a few acres each. My very first posting showed some shots of the island I took from the top of the mountain, and you can see the sugar cane fields and other agricultural operations.

Break time: me on the left, Shimojo san on the right and our volunteer Shimabukuro san in the middle.

We work basically from around 8-5, with breaks at 10, noon and 3. My teacher's wife demands that we break at noon for lunch, and every day I join my teacher for the meal. He takes a short nap right after lunch and I see him back in the shop between 1 and 1:30.

Early on we were working during minpaku season. This is the name for visiting high school students from all over Japan, who are hosted for two or three days by island families. Several of the host families know my teacher, and his son was a regular host, so daily we would have one or two visits from teenagers. The island's high school students are living on dorms and attending school on the main island.

Here are some kids visiting the shop enjoying snacks made by my teacher's wife, on the right.

The one day I took off, to go see the sabani races, a group of students was leaving with me on the ferry. Here they are waving to their host families, who came down to the port to see them off. Its truly an industry here.

I came across a couple of actions shots from the sabani race that I didn't share with my earlier posting.

Most of my touring of the island has been when I go for a run after work. Since we work seven days a week its been hard to see various sites but slowly I am finding different interesting places.

This is the view from the local junior high school. You can see the 200 meter (half the standard size) clay track I've been running on lately. The island's population has been falling for the last 30 years (from a high of 7,000 to the current 5,000) and there is no longer a high school here. Students live in dormitories and attend schools on the main island. The junior high school track team has gotten used to me. Despite the miles of rural roads just beyond the school, all distance training is done by running endless laps of a short circuit around the school grounds. For some reason this is very common in Japan.

Junior high school sports are pretty serious. Kids pick one sport and then train year round. If I run the course around the perimeter of the field the baseball players all chant "gamba" as I go past (short for "gambarimashyou" or "good luck/do your best")

The track team has come to look forward to me showing up to sometimes run with them. After every practice they line up, chant a loud thank you to their coach, and give him a bow.

There is one very tiny Catholic church on the island, serving mass on Thursdays when a Vietnamese priest comes over from the main island. I was told they have five congregants. There is also one small temple with a single priest. Since Buddhism came to Japan from China it actually came to Okinawa early. I've been told that the island's temple is extremely old, though the current building is not.

Okinawans have their ashes interred in small structures called ohaka. These evolved from a cave-like repository. Most are concrete though some newer (and expensive) ones are polished granite. Most families have one that is used for many generations. Ashes are placed in a pottery urn which is then placed inside the ohaka. The ohaka are all located outside of town in the countryside. They are clustered in small groups but some old ones stand alone.

Traditionally, the religious life on the island was dominated by noro, old women who were regarded as shamans (that's how it gets translated, perhaps imperfectly). Noro were sanctioned by some sort of governing body and I have been told that there is a 94-year old women still living here who was at least a noro-in-training.

I have found one wooden house in my travels here, everything else is poured concrete or concrete block construction. This local barbershop (still in business) is typical: a rectangular floor plan, concrete block walls and concrete tile roof. Before the War the houses were wood with thatched roofs. My teacher told me that having the roof blow off during typhoon season was a pretty regular occurrence. During the Battle of Okinawa every single building on the island was destroyed. Since Iejima was to become an air base (there were three runways here) I think that the US military intentionally razed all the homes. They evacuated all the surviving islanders after the battle, regardless. When they came back they lived communally in Quonset huts, and then began rebuilding with concrete block or coral block after the War. They then abandoned their traditional style of home for what they have today.

Speaking of the War I came across this memorial to all the islander's civilians and soldiers who died in World War Two. The large tablets have their names inscribed and there are over 3,500 names on the monument. This represents the vast majority of the island's population at the time, as much as 75%. Most, of course, were civilians killed in the battle for the island.

Here's a mystery: a small colony of huge land tortoises. I've asked many people on the island what they are for and while everyone knows about them, no on seems to know the reason they are here. One person did seem confident that the owner was harvesting the eggs for regeneration efforts. But my conversations typically are like the one I had with an elderly lady who pulled up on her scooter while I was photographing them:

"What are the turtles for?"

"I know the owner, he's my neighbor, but I don't know."

"Are they pets?"

"No."

"Are they for food?"

"NO!"

"Is it a zoo?"

"No."

"What is it then?"

"It's for people to stop and take pictures."

But lest you think that Iejima is a backwater, slow-paced existence, I've already attended two rock concerts here. One was mostly local talent while the other was imported from the main island. Most bands were late middle-aged men jamming classic rock and roll. The audiences were everyone from tiny kids to grandparents.

Rock on!

Forty Days and Forty Nights

2009-12-28T16:49:00.000-08:00

Shimojo san told me several times that when he was young he could build a sabani, even in the days of hand tools, in forty working days. Well, today was our forty-first day in a row of work (I had one day off to go see the sabani races). I was told at the end of the day today (December 28) that our New Year's holiday would start tomorrow after we had cleaned the shop thoroughly for Shogatsu, the Japanese New Year and perhaps the biggest holiday in Japan. We may be off until as late as January 4th, which is the end of the customary holiday, so readers should not expect any new blog postings about this boat. I do plan on using the time to research two older sabani that are on the island: one in a small, private museum and one of Shimojo san's first boats, which is displayed outside a municipal building. I don't see any reason why I can't throw up a blog posting or two about them. I also plan a long post about my life on the island.

Here's how we leave the boat at the end of the day in the event of rain. The shop roof is not watertight.

What has happened since the last posting is that we finished off the bow and stern transoms, did some more finish sanding inside the hull, installed the inwales and just today fitted the mast partners.

We glued and clamped the stern transom, coming back the next day and installing huundu, trimming it flush with the top of the planking, filling holes and sanding the whole thing.

At the bow Shimojo san and I drilled and hammered right through the bow transom and planking several long cedar dowels that I was given the job of making. These were made of scrap (sapwood I noticed) and well oiled before we drove them home. Note that the "heads" alternate from side-to-side.

Shimojo san cut the heads flush and left the other ends slightly long and split these with his knife. Then he drove a cedar wedge into the split and finally trimmed the end flush. At the stern the dowels simply ran into the transom through the hull. The top one was horizontal while the others were square to the planking. They were not wedged or glued, but Shimojo san wanted a tight fit with my dowels.

We hunted around our scrap pile and found some material for our inwales. We used the bandsaw and planer to prepare this material. Lo and behold, we used stainless steel twist nails to fasten the inwales. Shimojo san often tells visitors to the shop that there are no steel nails in the boat. There are now…. though the basic hull is entirely fastened with wood and bamboo (and glue).

He used his jogi, or homemade wooden ruler, to "horn" the location of the mast partners.

Then he clamped temporarily the mast from his small sabani and sat back to take a look at it. He was confirming that the rake was correct, which he told me later should look square to the sheer of the boat. I plan on measuring this angle when the mast partners are finished. The length of the mast should be about 2/3rds the length of the boat.

We are using Iejima Matsu (pine) for the partners. I have got to find out more about this wood, which is very dense, unlike any pine I've seen. It has a curious, slightly unpleasant smell as well. Beautiful stuff to work with a plane and chisel, however.

The partners have graceful, sweeping curves in two dimensions.

The word is that our mast is being delivered to us in the form of a young pine tree. We will cut it to length, strip the bark, shape the base and that's it. Otherwise we would use cedar and work it with a plane. Shimojo san's masts are square in section, tapering from the partner down to the step. Above the partners they are oval in section, slightly wider side-to-side than fore and aft.

There will be multiple holes in our step to allow the mast to have different rakes, or angles. Shimojo san says as the wind picks up you want the mast to rake further back. In very low winds it rakes forward. Sabani also have a curious system of mast wedges (illustrated here with the small sabani in the shop). In high winds you put the side wedges together to make the mast lean into the wind. I know of two naval architects who should be reading this blog and I hope at least one of them comments on these sailing arrangements.

The typical arrangement

Mast raked to starboard.

To port.

Increasing the rake aft.

Inside the Hull

2009-12-25T14:11:00.000-08:00

The last couple of days, since we turned over the hull, has involved putting in forty huundu along the entire inside seam between the bottom and side planking. This was mostly my job, with Shimojo san joining me to do a few. Otherwise he and his son fitting and installed the bow transom. Then yesterday Shimojo san and I started fitting the stern transom.

The huundu inside need to bisect the angle between the bottom and side, and one just has to be conscious of chiseling that angle correctly. Shimojo san laid out the fastenings to lie in between the ones on the outside of the hull, making small adjustments now and then to avoid a large knot. At the very hood end of one of the bottom's side timbers, he made a custom huundu that spanned the tiny end of the timber. He explained that this small amount of wood might crack under the wedging action of the fastening, so the middle of the key is straight. Of course, these timbers are all glued together so in effect they are like one solid piece, so…. But I've noticed that Shimojo san's reasoning always comes from the pre-glue days. He spent most of his career not using the stuff, so he isn't going to change his fundamental methods now.

I would say it was about six hours of labor for me to install the forty huundu.

As you can see, as always our rough cut stock has plenty of extra material.

After fitting the bow transom, using the saw in the joint, the transom was glued in and huundu installed in the face. Note more special fastenings to deal with this area. The bow and stern transoms are four inches thick.

We removed all the hardware that had kept the stern spread, replacing it with a wooden bar forward of the transom so we could work. The transom fit quite closely with its rough bevel. It got too dark yesterday to continue (a rainy Christmas Day) but I suspect today we will have this fit and glued in pretty short order.

Shimojo san and I talked at break yesterday and he told me that he has material for two more sabani, and his plan is to very slowly build them on his own schedule, and then he figures that's it. He realizes that physically this has become a bit too much (anyone else would have said that to themselves years ago -- his stamina and determination are amazing). Anyway, it was sad to hear him talk like this, and it made me feel ever more grateful that I had this opportunity to work with him. I visited my two Tokyo teachers on my way here and it was sobering to see how both men have aged. They were in their seventies when we worked together (and they could both have worked circles around people half their age). They are in their eighties now and no longer active. At this point the majority of the fifty or so boat builders I have met over the years in Japan are in their eighties. I don't know a boat builder under seventy, in fact.

Turning the Hull

2009-12-25T01:17:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas! We are actually further along than this; I've been remiss about postings for the last few days, but plan on catching everyone up.

Rolling the boat over turned out to be far easier than I thought. The last thing we did the night before was cover the boat in a thick coating of tempura oil (soybean). We gave the bottom another coat first thing in the morning. Then we made sure that the bars holding the sheer apart were good and tight. We clamped some scrap at the sheer in the way of the strapping so it wouldn't mar the hull. After rigging straps under the hull fore and aft, connected at one end to chainfalls, we lifted the boat just enough to get the sawhorses out and then, while suspended there, Shimojo san's son and his younger brother just grabbed the rail and spun her over. I had my video camera all set up and ready to go, so I got all ten seconds of it. I realize that the oil was a real help in this process, as the boat just slid over the straps.

Mrs. Shimojo had her customary place at one of the chainfalls, her husband at the other. It turns out that she worked side-by-side with her husband in the boat shop for most of his career, and daily after his accident.

After sanding the bottom seam inside the boat flush we laid out the location for our huundu. Tomorrow we have forty of them to mortise and install.

Finishing the Hull

2009-12-21T01:34:00.000-08:00

Things have happened quickly the last few days on the boat. In the interests of time I will just post photos from the last three days and throw captions under them. My apologies for the brevity but remember, you should always be able to click on a photo and enlarge it. Take a look around.

We fit the gwa gwa at either end using the suri noko method, after planing to the best fit possible, running a saw through the seam several times to make the fit perfect.

This is new for readers of this blog: The endgrain joint of the gwa gwa, which is a very shallow V-shape, is pounded with a hammer, compressing the fibers so that after the pieces are put together these fibers will expand and make the joint absolutely watertight. This method is used in other ways throughout Japan. I have been wondering how we were going to handle this large endgrain joint. Shimojo san pounded this to a point where the cedar had been compressed at least 1/8". He worked a little more gently near the edges so not to split them. Then he very lightly planed the high spots and we put the piece in place and did several more passes with the saw in the joint.

Helping and researching at the same time: I brace the gwa gwa while Shimojo san pounds the endgrain while I take notes on this method.

Shimojo san said that in the old days, the sabani's planking came together along the bottom near the bow. He said that the gwa gwa was much smaller and the seam ran level (as indicated by the batten). Shimojo san said that this plank seam underneath the bow was very weak (but partly the result of very wide planking material). The current form evolved and Shimojo san believes it greatly improves the boat.

Planing the forward gwa gwa to a rough shape.

The gwa gwa dogged down with staples. We've glued it to the planking (even glued the endgrain). Then we installed huundu and bamboo nails.

A detail of the huundu and nails holding the gwa gwa aft.

As of yesterday, awaiting final sanding.

Spent over half the day sanding the hull, 60 grit followed by 100 grit.

In the old days it was shark liver oil, which I am told you could smell at a great distance (and it didn't smell good). Now we are using soybean oil, the kind used for cooking tempura. We put a generous amount on the boat at the end of the day today. Shimojo san said it could soak up plenty. I am not sure if we will put more on tomorrow or not, because we are turning the hull over tomorrow. Seems that an oily boat would not be a good candidate for rolling over, but I will find out.

Mr. Rudder

2009-12-18T02:45:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago an older man stopped by the shop. He introduced himself as Kaji san, a pseudonym that means Mr. Rudder, and told me he was living aboard his home-built catamaran in the harbor. I have seen him a few times in the morning when I am down by the ferry port before work, and he has always invited me over to look at his boat. His invitations are so earnest, but since we work seven days a week its hard to do anything extracurricular.

This morning I saw him again and realized I had enough time for a quick look at his boat. We walked over and he explained that his boat has been out of the water for some time while he is working on it. Sure enough there it was in the lot, a big catamaran designed by James Wharram (http://wharram.com/index.php). He told me he built her out of 9 mm marine plywood. This is just 3/8" which sounds pretty light to me for a boat this size.

He named his boat LARK and he appreciated the meaning of the word. He also has it spelled there in katakana, one of the Japanese phonetic alphabets. Since there is no L sound in Japanese, a strict reading is "raku" which in Japanese means "ease, comfort, to have fun." Its a bilingual synonym. He has twin 15 hp outboards that sit in a pair of interesting engine wells. You can see them in the background right next to the hulls.

Note his mailbox (with the red T). The service provided by the Japanese post office is mind-boggling, so it didn't surprise me that he could establish his own delivery right to his boat. He's been here a few years, slowly working on her. Those are the engine wells viewed from the bows. I assume they swing up.

His masts are straight aluminum pipe, no taper.

What really amazed me, and if he hadn't pointed it out I would have never noticed, is that he took off his rudder hardware and replaced the gudgeons and pintles with lashings! He said that this was a suggestion from a friend in Kagoshima, a place he stayed in transit to here from Osaka, where he built the boat. He and his friend were inspired by the sailors of Polynesia in making this change. The rudders swung kind of stiffly on the lashings, but he assured me that he had complete confidence in this arrangement. Of course if they showed signs of wear they'd be simple and inexpensive to replace. Four lashings hold each rudder. What an idea!

Gwa Gwa

2009-12-17T13:56:00.000-08:00

This post could be entitled Guwa Guwa if you wanted to be strict about Japanese kana (there is no way to write "gwa gwa" in phonetic Japanese) but to do so would made it read differently than it sounds. My main title is the way it sounds.

I left readers at the end of my last posting with a cliffhanger: what did Shimojo san say in response to my question about building sabani with just glued seams? I was actually surprised when he responded that he thought modern glues were amazing, and that it might actually work. After sixty years of building boats he is not willing to try, mind you, but I thought his answer was very progressive.

A few moments later he said to me, "Before glues, do you know what we did when we could see daylight through a seam? We would put shark liver oil in the seam." He said that this oil was thin, but that spread on a seam it would stop small leaks. Fishermen also coated their boats inside and out with this oil three or four times a year if they wanted to preserve them. The boats turned black and Shimojo san told his own joke, calling the old sabani the well-known name "kurobune" or "black ships" (this is the common name for the ships of Commodore Perry's fleet that forced Japan in the 1860's to open its borders).

Cross cultural note: I read in an excellent true travel adventure story, Motoring with Mohammed, that in Yemen fishermen coated their boats with a mixture of shark liver oil and pureed dates. Shimojo san doesn't think it is possible to get shark liver oil today.

The last steps in finishing the soko included putting in the bamboo nails to supplement the huundu fastenings, and rounding the chine. And our order here is reversed from the old days: before glue Shimojo san would have put in the bamboo nails to hold things together so he could pound on the boat, chiseling for the huundu, and not have things move.

I mentioned that the boat looked like a sea urchin (a popular food in Japan) and that got a big laugh. Note how at the hood ends of the bottom's side timbers we "stitched" them in with some nails running horizontally.

The pieces fore and aft that complete the bottom are called gwa gwa. This is Iejima hogen ("gwa" means "a small thing") and in standard Japanese these could be called omotejiki and tomojiki, given their similarity to parts in standard Japanese boat construction.

The stern

As you can see, these were roughed out well over the size required. But these photos also give you some idea of the original size of our soko, and just how much material we took off, largely with the electric plane.

The bow

Once again I asked, just to make sure, if we could just cut this excess off with a saw. Shimojo san said no, and pointed out that the size of our rough timber gave him the freedom of fitting it so that all the sapwood (the white part, much less rot resistant) could be removed. Perfect answer. And we will remove all this with the electric plane, and I am beginning to realize that it doesn't take that much longer (it's just messy, dusty, noisy, etc.).

The gwa gwa join the soko with a shallow V-shaped butt joint. The edges of the planks were first straightened, then the bevels made even throughout to make up for the twist in the planking. Shimojo san and I worked on fitting the butt joint running a small cross-cut saw in the seam, closing it tight after each pass by tapping the end. We quit for the day just as we finished the bow; Shimojo san said it was too dark to see anyway. I asked him again why there were no lights in the workshop and he said that if there were, one would be inclined to work too much!

Point that out to your boss tomorrow.

Bottom's On

2009-12-16T02:10:00.000-08:00

Once we finished fitting the last seam along the bottom we broke for lunch. After lunch I was a little surprised as some of Shimojo san's family started to join us in the shop: his wife, daughter, son. I was there as well as our volunteer, Shimabukuro san. Turns out it was time to glue the bottom timber to the side planking.

Gluing that seam had not been mentioned before so I was a little taken aback. I asked Shimojo san about this and he said that once we start chiseling the mortises for the huundu the pounding of our mallets is going to move the bottom around, so we have to stiffen hull structure with glue. I asked him what he did in the pre-glue days and he said that he would have put in the bamboo nails at this point (we've always installed those after the huundo up until now). He said that the bamboo nails would have gone in at a slight angle, not parallel with the plank face, driven in from the side of the bottom timber into the side planking. We also cut a few inches off the ends of the bottom, not a flat face but in a very slight V.

Bondo, the most common Japanese wood glue, is a white, urea resin-type glue. Shimojo san adds an accelerator that amazingly kicks the stuff off in about twenty minutes. Since we always quit for the day after a glue-up I am not sure why he bothered, but in the accelerator went (a white powder) and that's why the family had joined us: because we needed lots of hands to scramble around, spreading glue fast, hoisting the bottom into position with the chainfall, pounding in dogs (staples) to clamp it together, etc. It reminded me of the frenzy that always accompanies steam bending in the West.

Shimojo san mixed a small batch of glue and stirred in fine sawdust (we've got plenty of that) for a filler. The bottom of the boat has lots of holes, from the staples in particular. As the rest of us worked he went around filling dents, dings and holes.

Shimojo san had already laid out the location of the huundu, spaced as always every shaku (foot) down the sides seams, to within about two inches of the ends. Thirty-eight in all. With the bottom dropped on we pounded in staples at points midway between our huundu layout, both inside and outside the boat.

Excess glue wiped up, tools, hands and clothing cleaned off, shop swept, end of day. Time to sit around for awhile and talk.

The next day I sat down to start installing huundu. I chiseled out flat spots along the seam (our bottom is still a good 1/4" oversize on the inside and outside) where the huundu go. Shimojo san told me he would put in the four at the ends. He said that those close to the endgrain were tricky. After lunch Shimojo san's son took over for him and basically with two people working it took most of the day to mortise and install all the fastenings. After we roll the boat over we have matching huundu for the inside seam.

An Aside:

Some readers might be wondering with all this use of glue why we are still relying on the traditional fasteners at all? It's a reasonable question, and when I asked Shimojo san it's clear that while he appreciates the convenience of glue he doesn't trust it completely. I have encountered this with some of my other teachers. We glued some of our seams in Tokyo and Fujiwara san said that adhesives, in his mind, were good just to hold seams together so that dirt had a harder time working its way in. To suggest to either of these men that they rely only on adhesives would probably, in their minds, call my sanity into question. That said, these are large boats and in the water racking forces could be great enough to break these glue joints. Wood movement alone could do the same. Besides, that line of dovetail keys looks so interesting.

Postscript:

I did ask Shimojo san about using glue alone and his answer led to a shark story. Too tired to write it all now, so look for my next post.

A Tour of the Shop

2009-12-12T14:50:00.000-08:00

Shimojo san has always lived at this site, although there have been three different houses here in his lifetime: his childhood home, destroyed in the War, then a small post-War house followed by the current large poured concrete structure. His shop is a cinder block structure that replaced basically a lean-to roof that covered his former work space, which had an earthen floor. We work on a concrete floor that is stained with various puddles of hardened epoxy, left over from his days building fiberglass boats. The shop has a huge opening to one end and no door. The weather isn't severe enough to require it, Shimojo san does not like working under artificial light, and he insists there is no crime on Iejima.

Spread around the edges of the shop are two seven meter sabani that he has built over the last couple of years. There are also two small sabani, one measuring 18' 5" in length with a 2' 8" beam and the smallest one, an amazing 12' 9" sabani that is just 2' 3" wide! Shimojo san's son told me that his father built them because he had the materials. I asked what one of the seven meter boats would cost and he said 1.8 million yen, or about $20,500 USD at today's exchange rate (the dollar is at near record lows right now). Despite the surge of interest in the sabani races, it seems that teams do not have that kind of money. At the sabani race I watched there were several new and several very old boats. Most teams are informal groups and finding an old sabani and fixing it up to race is the most cost-effective way to go.

Shimojo san has three large power tools: two 14" bandsaws and one multi-tool that combines a 12" table saw, planer and joiner. There are lots of hand power tools, particularly planes, one of the tools that Shimojo san can use easily. His hand tools are all quite old except for one new saw. I started using his old, 1960's vintage Makita power plane. Its all metal and too heavy for Shimojo san to use one-handed.

In a small room off the boat shop is his machine shop. He has a large metal lathe, a welder, drill press and other metalworking tools. He told me that he was the first person on the island to be able to machine parts (there was a traditional blacksmith here) and Shimojo san started installing small, one-cylinder engines in sabani after the War. He even installed some inboard engines in the tank boats (see previous post entitled Tankobune). Later he did propellor and shaft work and of course this work grew as more and more boats converted from sail to power.

We sometimes have a hard time finding tools we need.

Bamboo nails

Dovetail keys, or huundu

Strewn in the corners of the shop are the offcuts from trimming the sides and bottoms of previous sabani he has built. Shimojo san keeps these as patterns to check our work. He seems to save every single scrap of wood. There is a large pile of offcuts outside the shop. He has said that the planks from the tree for our boat that weren't used are enough to build another slightly smaller sabani, and I suspect he will start this boat as soon as we are finished.

Miyazaki cedar, over two inches thick, two feet wide, twenty-five feet long. Shimojo san told me I could take it home with me if I wanted it.

And nothing like papayas ripening outside the shop window.

Bottom's Up

2009-12-12T02:20:00.000-08:00

Soko

This monster of a timber finally went on the boat. Without the chainfall I don't know how we would have done it without at least four strong people. The three timbers that comprise the bottom have been glued together, and dovetail keys (huundu) installed along the seams inside and out, along with bamboo spikes.

When we got it in place the seam on one side was still very good, just as we had last fit it. The seam on the other side had opened in the middle, the result of a slight change in the bevel of the seam that canted it slightly when we glued the side timber on. It is open about 1/8th of an inch at the largest gap amidships, and fits very tight at bow and stern.

Shimojo san began running his largest saw in this seam, starting at the stern and moving forward. It took him 45 minutes to saw through eighteen feet of seam. He used his wedges to keep the seam open and by and large he wasn't sawing with too much resistance, just enough of a gap in the seam so that the saw at least touched both sides. The hardest work was at the ends where he needed to remove material so it would come together at the center. He has to work one handed, and I also noticed that for the most part he held the saw at an acute angle to the cut. He also oiled the saw blade frequently and of course used his innovative wedges (old saw blades) to keep the seam open just enough.

It is EASY to make a mistake doing this. What is likely to happen is the saw leaving the seam on the inside of the boat and beginning to wander off into either the side plank or the bottom. At either end you are going to be sawing against the grain on either the side plank or the bottom timber (working against the grain is going to tend to pull the saw blade out of the seam). Shimojo san got down off his chair and crawled under the boat several times to check this. He told me that for most of his career his wife would sit under the boat through this entire process and guide him, and when he had to work alone (they had six children) he sometimes rigged a large mirror. I finally wised up and got under the boat. At one point his saw started to bite into the edge. I told him and he made an adjustment and got it back on track. But if this man, building over 100 sabani over the course of sixty years, is this careful about this technique then you, Dear Reader, and I, better take these warnings to heart.

Shimojo san tries to give me advice explaining how to do this, pantomiming a frenzied pace and then waving his hand and telling me that straining with the saw is bad. His remarks are always punctuated by "Yukkuri dozo," or "slowly please." It is part of the reason I have taken to timing some of our work, to give some perspective on how carefully we do these things.

After one pass our day was over and he said we would need one more and the seam would be tight. He said that when he was in better health he could get a better planed fit so that only one pass of the saw would be necessary. The seam still looks very good and I am sure we will do the other side in one pass.

The next day: We finished the first seam and did do the other seam in one pass, or I should say Shimojo san did, taking three hours total to do it. His arm is sore and he took lots of rests. I simply stood at his side, or got under the boat to tell him how it was going. I finally asked him if he wanted me to do it, to give him a break. He waved me off, saying, "This is the hardest part of building sabani. This is the most important seam. I have to do it." I expected as much. After all, he's known me for just four weeks, and while he has trusted me with plenty of other work on the boat, not this, not yet.

Yukkuri dozo.

Sandaa and Other Lessons

2009-12-10T02:52:00.000-08:00

The two most unwelcome words in Japanese for me are "Sandaa oneigaishimasu," (please give me the sander). Shimojo san is basically limited to working with one hand and so he does an astounding amount of this work with a small electric plane and an angle grinder with a four inch, 80 grit sanding disk. The last two days we have been shaping the inside of the bottom of the boat and after doing the rough work with the electric plane he reached for his sander to finish it. The sander produces clouds of sawdust, and having suffered through the hollowing of the planking I decided to jump in and offer to at least smooth the bottom with one of his old hand planes. Thankfully, he let me go ahead, but still this was followed by four hours of sustained sanding by Shimojo san.

Shimojo san mounted the upright handles on some of his planes to make them a bit easier for him to use one handed, though he said that in the old days Okinawan planes had horizontal handles just like Chinese and South East Asian planes.

I was thinking as I cleaned up that I made a little diorama of Iejima.

This is what we have produced since our first dump run. I've told Shimojo san we have one boat on the sawhorses and two on the floor. He thought that was funny. Today we came in and he told me to start installing huundu along the seams inside the bottom. He looked at my first one and told me I had made a mistake, that I can't leave any gaps around the huundu (you can see the gap along the right side of the bottom edge). He hadn't been so concerned with the other ones I did on the outside of the boat, but then I realized that inside the boat any gaps in these fastenings will let rainwater into the bottom.

So I will review again the process of installing the huundu. No doubt I will learn more details and refinements as time goes on. Remember, I make these mistakes so YOU don't have to!

Shimojo san marks the plank seam so I know where to layout the huundu. The seam is so well fitted it can be hard to see.

He's reminded me more than once to make sure my pencil is sharp when I trace the huundu. Then we use a drill to hog out some material in the center. Shimojo san depends on the depth of the hole (we have a stop on the drill) to gauge how deep the huundu should be mortised (they go in 1-1/8 inches in the bottom).

The first chisel cuts are just to clear out the bulk of the waste in the center. The stain is from the oil that Shimojo san insists I dip the chisel in before working. That is common practice in Japan, though I never see reference to it in the States. Note that the huundu is far from symmetrical. Shimojo san cuts them free hand on the bandsaw, finishing the four angled faces with a sharp chisel. So when you trace them you have to mark them to keep the orientation correct.

My great contribution to Okinawan boat building: I mark the depth of the mortise on the back of my chisel (one inch wide), which I find far easier than searching around for the bottom of the drilled holes.

I chisel further out toward the line, keeping away from the top and bottom edges. This is why I screwed up the other fastening: I got too close too soon and the fragile top and bottom edges, running with the grain, are easy to crush.

I make four chisel cuts (all straight down) and these are at the final locations. Note how the cuts taper from to the line at the corners to just inside the line at the waist. That little bevel is the key to getting the huundu to pull the two planks together. I still don't touch the top and bottom edges.

Time to clean out the waste with the narrow chisel. I try NOT to lever against any of the edges of the mortise, especially the top and bottom.

The final cuts clear the top and bottom working very carefully just to the line.

Before hammering them home we bevel the edges going in to make them easier to insert. This is covered in my earlier two posts on huundu. You may notice that the labels changed in the photographs. I used several to illustrate this lesson.

Boat Building

2009-12-09T03:12:00.000-08:00

I feel like some of my recent posts have been digressions from the work at hand that it was time I got back to the boat building. It's been a productive week in the shop, and with this posting I will try to catch everyone up on the last couple of week's work.

In an email today another blog writer pointed out that the sabani turns the log canoe on its head, starting with the side planking and then adding the bottom instead of the other way around. He's got a good point and a great blog including an old posting about sabani:

http://indigenousboats.blogspot.com/2008/08/did-sabani-show-up-at-olympics.html

Once we finished bending the side planking, a process that took three days of pouring hot water on the plank set-up while we tightened large turnbuckles that we temporarily bolted through the planks. We then firmly fixed the side assembly to sawhorses, braced it to the floor (though it is not that firmly, so we have had to be careful), and then dropped the bottom timbers on top, fitting them one at a time. The first was the largest, the center timber, followed by one side then another. The chainfall was absolutely essential for this.

What surprised me was how slowly this process went, and how we incrementally fitted each piece. All three pieces came off the boat and to the horses for trimming about twenty times. But when they were finally fitted (to Shimojo san's standards) then we brought all three off the boat and set the bottom up on its side on our sawhorses. The time had come to do the final fit of the center seams, and for this we employed a technique that is used by boat builders across Japan: surinoko. It is also called suriawase and tosunoko (tosu mean to pierce). It involves running a saw blade (noko) through the seam to reconcile the opposing edges (awaseru or suru).

One of the big differences between the way that Shimojo san builds boats and three of my other teachers (my first teacher was basically a barrel maker and used a different technique entirely) is that he largely fits pieces with the plane (like Western boat builders do). My other teachers would go from a rough cut with a circular saw and do all the further fitting of planking by suriawase. My other teachers would spend half a day fitting a single seam the length of the boat. Shimojo san believes that the use of the saw is for the final fitting only, and he's quite critical of the way boat builders in the rest of Japan work. His argument is that it takes too long using just surinoko (which isn't born out by how long it took us to fit these timbers), and he argues that multiple passes eventually starts to round the corners of the planks edges (he's got a point there). If you click on this photo, you should be able to see clearly how the kerf of the saw creates two parallel edges.

We had to brace all the pieces to the wall, given their weight, and the need to hold them firmly in place while we sawed. Shimojo san has some great home made tools, basically old saw blades that he broke off and filed smooth. These are wedges that hold the seam slightly open so we can run the saw through (my other teachers used wooden wedges or caulking irons, but I have to say that Shimojo san's use of old saws here is brilliant). You work these wedges on either side of the saw, as needed, to keep your saw from being pinched.

The sawing motion is VERY important. Essentially the kerf of the saw, in passing between the two pieces, is creating two parallel edges. In our case both the side pieces had changed shape as we removed material. They were tight at the ends leaving a gap in the middle. We snapped in inkline and carefully planed the edges straight again, but still when we put them together the ends were tighter than the middle. We did about three passes with the saw at either end and one long, slow pass down the middle and Shimojo san called it done.

His son explained to me that while sawdust is coming out you must move very slowly down the seam, even if there is very little resistance, because the saw teeth need to cut closely spaced kerfs. If you move fast then you don't create the "rubbed" surface that is considered ideal. Shimojo san's son used a good metaphor when he told me it was like rubbing glass lenses. Here are some shots showing what our finished surfaces looked like. Remember that these were planed smooth when we started.

We then glued these timbers together using a glue common here in Japan called Bondo (no, it's not an auto body product). Shimojo san said traditionally he never used glue (he never had any). He said that with this boat he is concerned because the material didn't have the full year to dry that he likes, and he thinks that the glue is essential to minimize wood movement. We installed dovetail keys in the seams on the outside face, spaced one foot on center, along with bamboo nails (see earlier posts about these fastenings).

We turned the bottom over and for the last two days we have been doing the final shaping of the inside. Tomorrow we will be putting dovetail keys on the inside face and then putting the bottom back on the boat. Our final fitting will involved doing surinoko all along the seam between the bottom and side planking.

By the way, the bottom is about three inches thick throughout, and my guess is it weighs 400-500 pounds. I also think it is going to represent perhaps 50% of the weight of the final boat. A three inch thick bottom explains why sabani lasted the lifetime of their owners but also provided the stability needed for a hull twenty-five feet long and less than five feet wide....

Tankobune

2009-12-07T14:35:00.000-08:00

Legacies of the War.

There are some interesting legacies to the War that relate to fishing and boat building here in Okinawa. Before I arrived Shimojo san had roughed out a bailer for our boat. He used Okinawan pine and we are letting it dry before doing the final carving.

He told me though that the craft of making these bailers all but disappeared because after the War fishermen gathered American helmets and used those instead.

By far one of the most interesting uses of salvaged materials is the "tankobune" (tank boat) which were made from US Air Force aluminum drop fuel tanks, which must have rained down on Okinawa in the thousands. In addition to being used as water tanks (islanders collect rainwater from their roofs), fishermen were soon cutting them in half and making boats out of them. Here's one in the local museum.

They are about eleven feet long and one man I met told me that the island's airport had a squadron of Republic P-47 Thunderbolts after the War, so he thinks most of Iejima's tankobune were from P-47s. Tankobune were, of course, not for the high seas, and were used here mainly fishing for octopus, which the fisherman caught with a sight glass and spears, working close to shore.

Shimojo san told me that in his machine shop he was the first person to put an engine in a tankobune. He installed small, one cylinder gasoline engines in them. I asked how long these boats were used here and was told that they were common up until about twenty or thirty years ago, but tonight a visitor to my guest house insisted that he knew someone locally who used a tankobune until just a year or so ago. I couldn't help but ask if I could meet this person and see his boat, and tonight I got my chance.

Oshiro san is ninety-four years old and has had his tankobune for about sixty years. He was a tobacco farmer and a part-time fisherman, going after octopus as well as other fish. He and his wife were saying how hard life was after the War, "lots of kids and no money" and his wife added, "When you have no work its good for making babies." I've noticed that post-War families here were big ("baby boom" is a phrase that everyone recognizes). But the most amazing thing was learning that Oshiro san last took his tankobune out just two years ago, when he was ninety-two! You have to come to rural Japan, and see how hard the elderly still work in the fields and in the sea, to believe it. And you can be a militant wooden boat fanatic but you have to admit that tankobune are very kawaii, or cute.

A man after my own heart he also had an unpanki, which means "transport machine" and is the precursor to the truck here in rural Japan.

December 7th

2009-12-06T19:57:00.000-08:00

December 7th

Today is December 7th, and news media in America will be remembering the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor (there is no mention of it in the news media here). By chance yesterday I visited a cave that is considered a famous site on the island. I misunderstood the sign and this morning at break when I asked about it, Mrs. Shimojo told me the cave's significance is because islanders sheltered there during the Battle of Iejima.

This started a conversation about the War in more detail that I had heard before. Shimojo san told me that the Japanese Army was taking boys as young as 13 to build defences. His family fled the island for the main island and he told me that his family lived in the mountains for three months.

Today I visited the local museum at the port and the exhibits featured some USMC photos of the invasion.

The same mountain today.

The photo of the civilian refugees is revealing. Last week Shimojo san was telling me about the "good old days" and he said that when he watches historical dramas on TV he says, "We lived liked that." He told me that the island didn't get electricity until the early 1960's. Before that they cooked with firewood.

Tonight I rode a bicycle around the island and saw the old airfield where the official letter of surrender from the Emperor was flown by three Japanese bombers and then carried by US aircraft to MacArthur's headquarters. I found a building left as is from the battle as a war memorial. There is also a memorial to the civilians killed on Iejima, with what looks like a couple of thousand names on it. Shimojo san told me that the American soldiers were buried at one end of the island and later their bodies were taken away.

I also visited the memorial to Ernie Pyle, the famous war correspondent who was killed here on Iejima.

The memorial's message is simple and moving. The statement from the islanders is similarly compelling. Okinawa had been annexed by Japan, and from many references Shimojo san has made he considers himself Okinawan and not Japanese. As for the War, many Okinawans feel that the War was not theirs, but they found their homes become a battlefield. And after the War Okinawa was essentially annexed by the US. Thousands of Okinawans had their land seized for US bases, and these seizures increased with the Vietnam War. Up to half of Iejima at one time was off limits to the islanders, and still a quarter of the island is a US base. I found this old marker on my bike ride today.

Today Shimojo san finished talking by telling me that while his oldest brother is in his 90's and lives nearby, two other older brothers were killed serving in the Japanese Army. At that he fell silent, and after a minute or so he got up and we went back to work.

Questions and Answers

2009-12-05T14:57:00.000-08:00

This posting is my longest yet, but I hope you will bear with me.

One of the mysteries of the last two weeks has been why we've worked from such huge pieces of wood, and secondly why we have taken such incremental amounts off them in trimming pieces to fit. It just has seemed like an ungodly amount of work to shape and trim the three pieces that compose the soko, or bottom of our boat.

Of course my primary role here is as a researcher, and in that guise it is my job to record how my teacher designs and builds his boats. I have had a lot of questions lately about why Shimojo san does some of the things he does, but I have to be careful because it's certainly NOT my job to tell him how to build a boat (given that he is eighty years old, and has built more than a hundred boats over the last sixty years, this would be beyond presumptuous). But when his methods seem strange then I feel I need to carefully prod him to find out why he is doing things the way he is, even when the inference is clear that I think there is a better way.

Here I am roughing out our final piece of wood for the bottom, using an electric chainsaw. The other picture shows me taking an inch off the straight edge with the beam saw. Although it took half an hour to chainsaw the length of this eighteen foot plank, I was very grateful that we at least got rid of this much material at once. That is because we've been using the electric plane again and again to remove vast amounts of material. Shimojo san has two bandsaws, and I asked him if we could use one of them to saw this material. "No," he said, "that's bad." Lot's of time the answer to why in Japan has been, "Because that's how it's done." It was one of those moments where I didn't feel it was appropriate to press him for a reason, so half an hour later I finally had the thing chopped through.

Here is a shot of the bottom of our boat, with the center and one side piece at their basic final dimensions, and the last side piece dropped into place for the first time. Remember, I had just cut almost a two inch thick slab off the curved side of that thing, and another inch off the straight edge, and its still huge compared to the rest of the bottom.

So that was the next big question: why do we painstakingly plane down these timbers to a final fit? Twenty times we moved the center timber off the boat and to the horses for planing, and back. Twenty times we moved the first side timber for fitting. We are two days into it and ready for our ninth pass on the final timber as I write this. When we are done it will have been almost two weeks that we have been working on just these three pieces.

One thought I had today was that Shimojo san told me that a sabani, well taken care of, lasted the lifetime of its owner, so applying a cost benefit analysis, taking an extra week or two to build is really nothing compared to, let's say, a sixty year life of the product (one boat at the sabani race I watched was fifty years old).

The other thing that prevents me from rushing right in and asking Shimojo pointed questions about his methods is my second role as an apprentice. In Japan the apprentice system is well within the collective cultural memory. And a deshi (apprentice) lives and works under very strict cultural norms. I've had some very interesting moments with my other teachers in Japan when I tried to suggest something, and I frankly regret, in most cases, having ever raised any of my bright ideas. It is simply NOT the apprentice's place to question or make suggestions to the master, and the master is certainly under no obligation to explain himself. A westerner's first take on this would probably be resentment, followed by rebellion. Perhaps if you have studied martial arts you understand that demanding humility and obedience is actually an integral part of the learning process.

Shimojo san did not himself apprentice with a boat builder. He taught himself, and I realize that he treats me like more of an equal than any of my other teachers. He's encouraged me to copy all of his drawings and patterns (we are lucky to have them; he told me that he always worked from memory alone until a few years ago, when he realized he was forgetting things and made drawings of five types of his sabani), and he says he hopes I will go back to America and build a sabani.

An answer:

Today I was taken by surprise when we were lying under the boat together marking the timber (yet again), when Shimojo san turned to me and said, "You're smart. You are wondering why we are taking so long to do this." I said that I was wondering, and I asked him why he didn't measure the timbers and cut them nearly to shape right from the start. He said, "I used to do this whole bottom in three or four days. I would maybe make three passes with the chainsaw then a final fit with the plane. But since my accident I can't use a chainsaw so the only tool I can use is the power plane." He added, "I couldn't go to Miyazaki to supervise the milling of the wood and it came here too big." About the bandsaw he said, "I can't do that one-handed, that's dangerous." So what it boils down to is that he basically has to do all his work one-handed, which means he only has the power plane (or has me use the electric chainsaw, but he is not ready to trust me to make finish cuts with it). As for the time factor, I think that to Shimojo san its just not a concern. He's eighty years old and likes building boats (we work seven days a week) and doesn't have to worry about when they get finished.

Ironically this same morning his neighbor and I were chatting before work and he said, "Shimojo san will always build boats. That's all he wants to do. There is no stopping him."

Huundu Two

2009-12-04T04:06:00.000-08:00

Okay, my last posting isn't even cold yet and I need to write a bit more about the butterfly fastenings we are using. Today my teacher put three huundu in the seam aft where the two side planks come together. As an aside, he told me that this bit of design is one of his signatures. I guess in other sabani the bottom timbers run all the way to the base of the transom, but when we bent the planking we pinched the side planks together over about a 16 inch seam aft. It is kind of sexy to create that narrow edge under the boat aft....

The photo above shows the fastenings and pot of oil that Shimojo san dips the huundu in before hammering them home.

Here's a look at that seam. At the bottom of the photo you can see the base of the transom (an inverted triangle). Two of the huundu have been installed and the mortise for the final one has been cut. Note how the outer edges of the huundu are right at the edge of the planking, which is falling away at a sharp angle. Shimojo san stressed that the width of the mortise needs to be generous (not a gap, but not tight either) otherwise the fastening will split the plank.

But the really important thing is that the undercut of the mortise, which makes the huundu tight, does NOT run from the outer corners to the waist like on our other huundu. Instead it starts from the middle of the sloping side and runs to the waist. So in effect these huundu don't have quite the squeezing power, but this ensures that they don't stress the edge of the plank and split them. These are the details that make my mind race (and sometimes tax my Japanese) when I am doing this kind of research.

I also forgot to mention in my last blog posting that you chamfer all the edges of the huundu in order to help it get started in the mortise. We use a knife or a chisel and just quickly chamfer all the edges.

Once again we used bamboo nails with the huundu. Note how the two enter from alternate sides. They get oiled as well and then all the fastenings get cut flush.

A shot of a bamboo nail with the shaku scale. It is seven sun, three bu long, just under nine inches. The node section in the bamboo creates the "head" of the nail. It is mosodake (moso bamboo) from the mainland. Shimojo san says that Okinawan bamboo is poor quality.

Huundu

2009-12-03T01:07:00.000-08:00

It's about time that I blogged about one of the most important techniques used in building traditional sabani: the dovetail key fastenings used to hold the boat together. Except for some trim on the gunwales, the boat we are building will be held together entirely with these wooden keys and bamboo nails. Called "huundu" in the Okinawan dialect (and no one yet can tell me the etymology of the word) I have found these types of fastenings in a few other places in Japan, including river boats of the Mogami and Agano Rivers, and a type of semi dugout built on the Noto Peninsula. All these places are on the Japan Sea but far from Okinawa. In some ways this project's genesis was in my desire to learn this technique. I knew the last boat builder of the Agano River and he agreed to teach me, but he became to old and ill to work, so I began thinking of where else I could go and learn this. Here I am, years later, in Okinawa.

As you can see these are mass produced. They are made of hardwood while the planking or our boat is softwood (cedar). Each one is a little bit different so when we lay them out across a plank seam we carefully traces the edge and number them. They need to be used in the order they are laid out.

My teacher likes to use a drill set to the proper depth to hog out some of the material. The base of the drill bit is also a guide to carving the depth of the mortise. These are set inside and outside the boat, they are spaced at one shaku (one foot) intervals with an even stagger between inside and outside. We had to take into account areas where we were hollowing the planking; In those places where the planking is thin, there is a 1/4 inch of material left between the base of the huun du and the other side of the plank.

The key to cutting the mortise for them is to cut to the line at the top and bottom, but then as you approach the narrow waist of the huundu stay just a millimeter inside the line. It is in the middle that you want the mortise to be just a little tight. Also, the sides of the mortise are square to the face of the planking, just like the sides of the huun du. You can just see my pencil line in the photo.

Once the mortise is finished we dip the huun du in oil (traditionally shark liver oil, now fry oil) and using a mallet drive it into the mortise. The nature of our undercut makes the huundu pull the two planks tightly together.

In between the huundu we also drilled holes at a very shallow angle and nailed in long bamboo nails. The drill bit was slightly undersized and you don't drive these nails more than about 1/4" into the wood once they reach the bottom of the hole. Otherwise they are likely to snap off. When we are all done we saw off the excess material, plane and sand the surface.

Here is what they look like on a finished boat.

And by the way, on the Agano River these fastenings are called "chigiri," or in the local dialect "chikkin." They are also called zuzumi, after the two headed Japanese drum which they resemble. They are well known to furniture makers the world over, as butterfly keys or dovetail keys.

The Bottom (Soko)

2009-11-30T06:37:00.000-08:00

After getting the planks bent we anchored the assembly firmly to the sawhorses and began the process of fitting the bottom to the boat. The bottom, or soko, consists of three large timbers and we started with the largest center piece. This timber is huge, over a foot wide, nine inches thick and some eighteen feet long. It easily weighed over 250 pounds when we started. We have chainfall riding on a cable across the shop which allows us to move this on and off the boat, for scribing and then shaping on a pair of sawhorses.

This timber had been roughed out with a chainsaw by my teacher and his son before I arrived here. Here it is right side up where we are working on the edges fore and aft that meet the side planks and also hollowing the center. The square bump you see forward is the mast step, just an integral part of the timber and not a separate piece of wood.

You can see the strap running to the chainfall and the horses to the left where we move the timber to work on it. In the last three days we have moved this timber on and off the boat at least twenty times. I am amazed by how incrementally my teacher fits this. We take off just an eighth to a quarter inch of material at most at a time, each time getting a little bit closer to the final fit. This center piece only touches along about two feet of seam at either end (that's the bow toward the camera). We will be adding timbers along either side of this one next. Shimojo san has told me that the final goal is a bottom timber that is about three inches thick.

Here Shimojo san is scribing for the next fitting. He does this by eye, sometimes with the help of a batten. Then its time to take the timber off the boat, trim to fit, and then rig it to move it back on. Repeat.

Over the last three days we have planed the bottom considerably. Its still big and heavy, but we have turned a lot of it into shavings nevertheless. This is just the result of one fitting. The mountain of shavings grows ever bigger.

This is looking aft from inside the hull. If you enlarge the image you can see how we hollowed the side planking and the material we left to create thwart risers (which will support the seats later). Some of the turnbuckles and chains we used to bend the planks are visible, along with the bars we installed to spread the planks. The bottom timber is running down the centerline of the photograph.

Japanese youth culture is notoriously famous for its obsession with fads, be it fashion, music, dance, etc. It seems the current fascination is watching two old men build a wooden boat, if these visiting seventeen-year-olds from Niigata Prefecture are any indication. We are trying to enjoy the attention while it lasts.

Peace and oranges.

Ben again

2009-11-29T04:32:00.000-08:00

We share the shop with what seems like a hundred sparrows. They are noisy in the morning until they clear out for the day. One remarkable quality they seem to have is that they don't leave droppings in the shop. That bit of fastidiousness (very Japanese?) will be important to anyone who has varnished or painted a boat in the company of birds.....

"Sparrow" in Japanese is "suzume." But here on Iejima they are called "chyou chyou."

Guardians

2009-11-29T02:32:00.000-08:00

I am digressing again, but one of the charming features of Okinawa are the shisa which guard the entrances to most homes. Traditionally these lion figures were mounted on rooftops, but now people place them at either side of their driveways. The shot above shows a traditional Okinawan style house. There are no wooden ones left on this island, but there are some made of coral block walls. Most are concrete block. If you look closely you can see the shisa on the roof.

The modern ones range in size and feature glazing, etc. Some of the old ones are basic unglazed fired pottery. When there are in pairs one lion always has its mouth closed while the other one's is open.

This old one is my favorite.

Yukkuri, dozo

2009-11-27T01:35:00.000-08:00

The title of this entry means, "Slowly, please." That's been our watchword the last three days as we've slowly begun bending our planks. The first day on the job the boat builder was telling me that we would be pouring hot "oyu" over the planks to bend them. Japanese sometimes say "oyru" for "oil" so for a few days I thought he meant hot oil. Who was I to argue? Then I figured out that oyu is boiling water. In the old days his wife would tend a pot and they would burn all the shavings from the adzing and planing of the planks. It was her job to keep running in pitchers of hot water to pour over the planks. Now we are using a diesel flash boiler and a hose.

Here's the view of the bow joined together.

Spraying the hot water is something we've done every few minutes for days now.

Starting to happen.

It took over a day to get to this point, with lots of clamps, bars, and turnbuckles used.

This is the view of the stern. The large turnbuckle at the bottom is used to spread the planks.

We used a handsaw, making many, many passes, running between the planks to create the faying surfaces at the bow. Sabani have very narrow bow transoms instead of a stem.

Here is Shimojo san doing the same sawing at the stern. He says it is his signature that his sabani's planks come together a few feet forward of the transom.

Here's a closeup of some of the rigging for this bending process.

A Bit About Ben

2009-11-25T03:24:00.000-08:00

A Bit About Ben

One of the interesting aspects of this research is language. In Japan regional dialects are called "ben." What people speak in the Osaka region is called Kansai Ben, for instance. Some dialects are quite infamous: in 2003 as we were getting ready to leave Tokyo for Aomori, our friends were horrified. We were heading right into the heart of Japan's most infamous dialect: Aomori Ben. We were told that even to native speakers the Japanese spoken in this region was impenetrable. In fact, it wasn't nearly so bad as the dire predictions. First, we found that there were three main dialects in Aomori: Nambu Ben, Shimokita Ben and Tsugaru Ben. We were living on the border of the first two. Tsugaru Ben is probably justifiably scary, but even so really everyone under the age of seventy can speak what is considered Tokyo Ben (standard Japanese). It took me about three weeks to sort out the different sounds my teacher used that deviated from the Japanese I had studied.

The same is true here in Okinawa. I've noticed that these rural dialects tend to me a more clipped from of Japanese. For instance, my teacher does not say "tomodachi" for "friend," instead he says "tomaji." Where it gets interesting is in the names of the parts of the boat. Some of these words I have been told are Iejima Hogen. People here don't refer to their dialect as Iejima Ben, but as Iejima Hogen (how's that for a head fake, their dialect has a different word for "dialect"). My dictionary defines "hogen" as: "an obsolete word." The locals would probably define it as: "the way we talk (as opposed to the funny way you talk)."

Here are some common boat parts and my list of vocabulary thus far:

ENGLISH JAPANESE IEJIMA HOGEN

rudder kaji haji

sail ho pu

bottom shiki/soko su fu

bow omote pijira

stern tomo tomopirjira

wedges kusabi shikasa

mast hobashira hashira

beam funabari haiki

paddle kai ya fu

sheet sheetsu tina

I would sincerely appreciate any comments on language, or any of the words I have mentioned here, from native speakers to students of Japanese.

Carving.... and carving

2009-11-24T01:58:00.000-08:00

We've spent over a week hollowing out our two planks. These planks began as nearly 2-1/2 inch thick planks, twenty-five feet long. We've removed almost half their volume, leaving basically a rim around the edges (representing bow, sheer, stern and bottom) and leaving within the planks what will become the thwart risers (what supports the seats). As we did this work (and believe me, it was work). But probably nothing like the old days, when Shimojo san used the adze, above, to do most of this work. He told me that the blade was made from the spring of an American military vehicle and that it was his idea to weld the farming tool to it, to give the adze more weight and make it easier to use.

We began the process by cutting the edges of those parts of the plank we were not hollowing out. With the blade depth and angle set very carefully we cut those edges.

This monster cut almost a one inch wide swath. It is no fun to push (we cut to the full depth with each pass). We cut a series leaving material between each pass so we had something to lay the tool on as we tried to come back and cut the remaining material out.

Beyond that the work was primarily with hand tools, including planes, gouges and chisels. Shimojo san's son used an air chisel. Finally we turned to a grinder and then sanders. I believe that today we finally finished it off.

Given all this work, I was given over to fantasies of building up these planks out of two layers, essentially adding the gunwales, risers, etc. to a plank. When I went to the sabani races I saw boats built this way. The style is called "nanyouhagi" meaning "southern ocean joining" or, basically, the foreign way. After asking Shimojo san about it he shook his head and said one word: "Bad."

If you click on this final image and enlarge it you will get an idea of what we've done. Basically we hollowed half the thickness of these planks. I was surprised when we finally moved them today at how much lighter and more flexible they have suddenly become.

Off To The Races

2009-11-22T14:47:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I traveled to Itoman, a large fishing port at the southern end of the main island, to see the last sabani sailing race of the year. About a dozen boats took part in a mass launching from the beach. The idea was to sail/paddle out and do two laps of a triangle course but the race was cancelled due to high winds after a lap. There were a couple of capsizings, a few collisions, etc. but this event seems to be more about the fun than the competition.

Sabani don't have rudders, steered instead with a paddle, so it takes some real skill to maintain direction.

It was said that this boat is fifty years old. There were several old boats in the race.

This crew dragged in late, looking pretty exhausted.

And some people just sailed around, having fun. The folks who race are mainly young, watersports types, yachtsmen, fishermen and, I suspect, those Japanese who have come to Okinawa from elsewhere who appreciate the island life... That's a very informal survey....

I was taken to the sabani race's NPO headquarters, where they have a small museum. This is a boat made right after WWII from one half of an air force drop tank. This was a fishing boat.

Here's a look at it from the stern. Nice use of military junk.

In Itoman Port I found some old power sabani fishing boats. Most were wood covered with fiberglass and a couple were entirely fiberglass, but you see the sabani shape, with sponsons added, etc.

In one old abandoned sabani I looked inside and saw this fastening half fallen out. Thinking it would be a nice souvenir I tried pulling it out but it wouldn't budge! Testimony to this form of construction. This is the huundu, or dovetail key, and I need to devote a blog post to this form of fastening. The boat I am building will be entirely fastened with these. NO NAILS. More on this soon.

Shimojo san

2009-11-21T14:23:00.000-08:00

My teacher is Mr. Ryujin Shimojo, who took up boat building in his early twenties after working as a fisherman like his father. He was 16 during the Battle of Okinawa and he told me that he and all the other schoolchildren were made to build fortifications. As for fishing, in those days the only boats were unpowered sabani, both big and small, and Shimojo describes this work as cold and demanding. He told me how he would fish alone, holding the sheet in one hand, the rudder in the other with the trolling line held in his teeth.

Here is a photo of him and his wife. In his forties he was in a severe car accident that permanently damaged the left side of his body and he lost one eye. He had four children to take care of and he continued to work, though one of his sons and his wife began to help him in the shop.

Here is his son Tomio san helping him. Tomio is working with us part-time on the project, and Shimojo san's wife comes in daily to pitch in.

This is the shop. Today all the buildings on the island are concrete or cinder block. Wood may have been nice, but rebuilding after the typhoons wasn't. Shimojo san did a variety of work here, mostly boat building but he also set up a machine shop for shaft and propellor work once small engines became available. He began building powered sabani and then built what he called "wasen."

"Wasen" means "traditional Japanese boat" but the distinction for Shimojo san is that a sabani is something else unique. It is a reflection of the idea that here in Okinawa there is a culture distinct from the rest of Japan. This photo shows his very first boat built in the Japanese style. He built more of these and then switched to fiberglass. In the harbor I found some of the old style glass boats, perhaps ones he built.

He said his biggest boat was 35 feet long. He considers sabani to be the pinnacle of boat building and he had some interesting things to say about the evolution of boats that he built. Of wasen he said, "It's easy, you just set frames up on the bottom bend the planks around and that's it." Of fiberglass, "You just spread the stuff around and you have a boat."

Working with him has been a revelation in tenacity and endurance. It is enormously humbling to be working alongside a 79-year old man and see his severe physical limits, and then think that he has carried on like this for over thirty years. He has made many adjustments and for the most part uses all the tools with one hand. He is just five feet tall but he can swing around a heavy power tool easily with his right arm.

I do as much as I can to anticipate what he needs but if one of these planks needs lifting and I am not there he lifts it. He refers often to his accident, and his bad arm and leg, but every time he completes the story with a smile and a laugh.

He marks his work with the first and last kanji (Chinese characters) of his name: SHIMO JIN.

Today I am off to the races, literally. I take the 8 am ferry back to the main island and then down to Itoman where the last sabani races of the season are taking place. There are only three sailing races a year and when Shimojo san heard I was invited to see them he gave me the day off. He said that in my absence he might just spend the day sitting in the shop doing nothing.

So what is a sabani?

2009-11-19T02:08:00.000-08:00

As I have already mentioned, sabani are the traditional small, wooden fishing boats of Okinawa. Ordinary traditional boats in Japan are called wasen, but I've learned from my teacher here that he does not consider sabani a wasen. This reflects at least in part the sense here in Okinawa that this is a different culture from the rest of Japan. It was the Ryukyu Kingdom before being annexed.

The photo above is from the cover of KAZI magazine, Japan's largest and oldest boating publication. It shows a medium sized sabani. Sabani were traditionally built in a range of sizes and employed in fishing. They were paddled and sometimes sailed, with a large paddle being used in lieu of a fixed rudder. After the War small engines began to appear and sabani slowly converted over to power, getting ever larger as a result. But by the 1960's wasen-type boats were making inroads among fishermen, first in wood and then in fiberglass. Very quickly sabani began to disappear.

What mainly interests me about these boats is their design and construction. Sabani represent an evolution from original dugout canoes to a composite method in which large timbers are fastened together, then carved, then planks added to the structure. This process is not unique to Okinawa; it happened in exactly the same way in the Chesapeake Bay region of the United States, among other places. As the large trees required for dugouts disappeared, boat builders had to adapt and develop more material-efficient means of construction.

Perhaps the greatest fascination for me as a boat builder is the fact that sabani builders make these exquisite boats using no nails whatsoever. Instead they use hardwood butterfly keys called locally huundu (note to readers: ANYONE with a theory on the etymology of this word please write me!).
I have seen boats built in Japan using these fastenings in just three other places - where they are called by different names - but I have never had the chance to learn how to do it until now.

What is becoming clear, just four days into this project, is the degree to which these boats are literally carved into shape. These photos show a small sized sabani that my teacher built. We are building an eight meter boat, medium-sized.

This photo, taken at the bow, shows the keys that join the large timbers of the bottom to the side planks. In between each huundu you can see a single bamboo nail. No doubt the long traditions of carving boats just led to wooden fastenings, skills that amazingly exist (barely) today.

Although at times I've been tempted to refer to some special boats as sculpture, nothing really quite approaches these boats for a marriage of aesthetics, engineering and materials. As I share more about my teacher and our work, I will tell you some of the many references that he makes to how these boats evolved in construction. Its all very different and fascinating.

About Iejima

2009-11-18T03:01:00.000-08:00

Iejima is just 22 km around, one of the many small islands that make up greater Okinawa. My teacher's family has lived here for 120 years. Located off the NW corner of the main island, it is a 30 minute ferry ride from Nago City.

The island has one precipitous mountain in its middle, otherwise it is flat, covered with sugar cane fields that have in turn been giving way to grazing land for beef cattle. Farmers here also grow bananas, papayas and dragon fruit, as well as tobacco.

Amazingly, the island's water comes from a freshwater spring that lies under the ocean. The road you see here is the access to the pumping station which brings the water up to the bluff. Apparently one reason sugar cane is in decline is that it was so water-intensive.

My boss' son told me he used to spearfish along this coast when he was young.

A map of the island. Five thousand people live here now, along with a detachment of US military personnel. The blank space on the map above is that area under the control of the US military. Three thousand five hundred citizens and Japanese soldiers died here in the Battle of Okinawa (my teacher lost two close family members during the war) and the most famous American to die here was the war correspondent Ernie Pyle. There is a memorial marking the spot where he died, with a monument marked very simply, but movingly: We Lost A Buddy: Ernie Pyle. The older of the two runways (now weed-grown) has some claim to fame: it was here that three Japanese bombers landed delivering the official letter of surrender from the Emperor.

The Project

2009-11-18T02:34:00.000-08:00

For over two years I have been trying to organize a project in Okinawa where I could study the boat building methods of the sabani, the traditional fishing boat of this region. There are perhaps only three craftsmen left in this archipelago who still know these methods. All of them are old and this tradition is in real danger of being lost. For me, having studied previously with four other Japanese boat builders, another reason to come to Okinawa was the unique technology used here. In particular the use of wooden butterfly keys in lieu of nails to fasten the planking together.

Funding for this project comes from the Edwin Monk Scholarship of the Center For Wooden Boats, Seattle, the Asian Cultural Council of New York, and the Nippon Foundation of Tokyo. Mr. Ryujin Shimojo of Iejima, Okinawa, agreed to teach me how to build a sabani, and since this past Monday, November 16, 2009, we have been at it. The project should run through the end of January so please check back to see our progress.

Later, a fuller accounting of this project will appear at my website. Next year the Museum of Maritime Science (Funenokagakukan) in Tokyo will publish a monograph that I am writing on the construction of the sabani.