Ukaibune (Cormorant Fishing Boats) in Masuda, Shimane

Yesterday I drove from Miyoshi out of the mountains to Masuda, a small city on the Sea of Japan. I decided to forgo the expressway for the secondary state roads. It took over twice as long but it was a gorgeous drive.

I was surprised, however, when State Route 433 became a one lane road.

My compact Honda Fit barely made some of the hairpin turns, and thank goodness no other car came the other way or one of us would have been backing up for a mile or more. This one lane stretch took me over a pass and lasted for several miles.

Back on the open, two-lane road, I traveled through one lovely village and hamlet after another.

In Masuda I met my contacts, Reiko and Eriko. Reiko is a volunteer guide with the Takatsu River Foundation and Eriko is her friend. Reiko had found a fisherman, Mr. Takamori, for me to meet. He has two boats and happily let me measure the larger one. He said fishing with cormorants here ended about twenty years ago but they used the same type of boat he uses.

It turns out Eriko's husband's grandfather was the last usho, or cormorant fisherman. She went home and got a photograph of him.

What surprised me was learning he fished without using a leash, relying on voice commands only. Takamori said they would use their birds as decoys to catch young birds, and they would release older birds back to the wild. Also, he said this fishing had only a slight history as a tourist event. Imagine, these were commercial fishermen using birds.

Takamori's boats were built by Mr. Sasai, who is now 85. He built these about five years ago and they are his last boats. I obviously hoped to meet him but Takamori said he was ill, so I didn't press this.

The same wide, slightly tapered bow plank I've been seeing on river boats this trip.

The beams notch into the sides with a dovetail joint.

Takamori explained his neighbors boat was rigged for pole fishing, not net fishing like his boats. The major difference are the double beams in Takamori's boats. He said his boats were the type the usho used.

Eriko and Takamori arrived just as I wrapped up measuring his longer boat, which is 21-feet long. He called them hiratabune, which means "flat-bottomed boat."

One of the old main streets near the river.

Takamori fishes the lower river down to the mouth.

Reiko and Eriko made some phone calls trying to reach the boatbuilder's apprentice, a man now in his 70s who builds boats upstream. He was out but we looked in on his shop where I saw a brand new boat. At a warehouse were more fishing boats. We met with the head of the fisherman's union who said about 800 people are active seasonally fishing for ayu, a sweetfish. Most are using a rod from shore but the net fishermen use boats. He and Takamori had said the boats were shorter upstream due to differing conditions.

I was going to measure one of these boats but it was only marginally smaller than Takamori's. Since these were out of the water, however, I was able to get more construction details and confirm the thickness of the bottom planking.

A view upstream on the Takatsu River. Its not dammed, efforts having been fought off by local residents. Its said to have some of the purest river water in Japan.

Ukaibune (Cormorant Fishing Boats) in Miyoshi, Hiroshima

Yesterday afternoon I picked up a rental car in eastern Hiroshima and headed inland into the hills to Miyoshi, a mountain town where they use ukaibune. Fifteen years ago my wife and I traveled 10,000 km in a van around Japan meeting boatbuilders and we came here and met Mr. Mitsumori. Six years ago I learned he passed away, but three years ago a house carpenter began building boats.

The trip via Route 375 was gorgeous, passing through farmland that could have been Vermont but for the rice and the architecture.

Lots of these large farm complexes. The roof on the left is tin covering an original thatched roof. These old thatched-roof farmhouses are huge. A furniture maker lives in this one and has his shop and showroom in the barn on the right. He said the house has been in his wife's family since it was built 200 years ago.

I stopped in at the tourist office when I got to Miyoshi and asked them where I might see cormorant fishing boats. They fish while tourists watch summers only, but down at the port we found one boat, but this is shorter and just a regular fishing boat, not a cormorant boat. Three rivers converge in Miyoshi and this is the Basengawa, which means "horse washing river."

The staff person took me to the storage building for the town's fleet of boats. The large boats that carry the tourists they call yuuransen.

Some calls were made and Hirofumi Tenkyou, the current boatbuilder, came to meet me. He's sixty-five and says he'll keep building five more years. We had dinner together and as he talked about boatbuilding he kept using the verb "to eat." I finally realized he kept saying boatbuilding did not provide enough to feed oneself.

At the local museum they have an old tourist boat on display. This boat was interesting because it was set up for two people to scull oars from the stern with two bow persons using poles.

Fishing in front of tourists has been going on about one hundred years in Miyoshi.

Historic photo showing the fleet of fishermen.

We stopped at Mitsumori's house so I could pay my respects to his widow. I remember well his glass-walled shop...

...with its gorgeous view of the farming hamlet where he lived.

We had a great visit with Mistumori san and his wife fifteen years ago, but I was never in the house until today. It turns out Mitsumori san was an avid collector of Hello Kitty.

Mitsumori san's widow and Tenkyou san. I remember when we said goodbye fifteen years ago he and his wife both went back to work on the boat. I snapped a photo of her chiseling nail mortises. We talked about it today and while many boatbuilder's wives were helpers when needed, she worked more or less right alongside her husband. "A fifty-year apprenticeship," she joked. As we talked it was obvious she knew a lot about boatbuilding and the history of the boats of this region. She said she and her husband built between 1,000 and 1,500 boats. When he was young he could build a boat a week.

Here was a family photo showing Mitsumori building two large tourist boats outside of his shop.

The workshop, with a clay floor. I did not remember the strip of concrete from 2003.

Mitsumori san worked from memory, but his widow showed me these full-size drawings of some cross-sections.

He split a piece of hinoki specifically to make the blade of a sculling oar. I met a boatbuilder in Miyazaki who told me using the material like this made the finest oars, and he charged extra for them.

His son showed me a set of sawhorses of different heights, along with patterns for plank angles.

The strip of concrete was to provide a flat surface to set up the keel, which was laid on the horses of varying heights, matching the bottom's curve, then the red metal jacks in the back were braced against the ceiling to bend the bottom to shape.

Back at the City storage facility, I stretched a string to measure the curve of the bottom. These boats are just under thirty-feet long.

Details of the beams.

Looking at the stem detail. The middle plank lies on the beveled side of the stem (there is no stem rabbet) and the sheer plank lies on the square side of the stem.

Tenkyou san explained the small differences between his boats and Mitsumori's. He leave the middle plank wide at the stern so the boats track straighter. Mitsumori planed these edges flat to the bottom.

In the storage building was an old, dust-covered Mazda Porter, perfect for my next research trip. According to Wikipedia, this wagon is from the seventies and may have had a top speed of 49 mph!

I found one boat along the river. Tenkyou san said he sells these for $4,500. 

Iwai Island (Iwaijima)

The last two nights I’ve stayed with Mr. Koji Hara, who runs a kayak tour business from a small island. He is also part of a group called Setoden that hopes to build a replica ship from the Inland Sea. He took me to Iwai shima to meet a boatbuilder. First we drove to a very small village to catch a passenger ferry. There, an elderly woman gave me a tour of the village, showing me abandoned houses. She took me right into one house. Later I chatted with a 94 year old man cutting bamboo for firewood. He said he was from the village but had been drafted in the War and was captured by the Russians at the War’s end and held in prison for three years in Siberia. He said he was the youngest soldier in his group. As prisoners they cut firewood. He said his father was a boatbuilder and he thought he had his drawings and tools somewhere.

View from the road out to the ferry port.

The man's house and barn. Note his tricycle farm wagon, which had labeled capacity of 500 kg, over half a ton!

This woman chatted with us at the port while we waited for the ferry. My friends shared the story of why I was going to Iwaijima.

She went home and came back with this photo of a boat launching in town and insisted I take it.

On the island we met Mr. Shinsho, who is building about a 12 meter boat for Miyajima. He is 73 and a third generation boatbuilder. His great grandfather was a temple carpenter. His material is from Miyazaki and 12 meters long. All his planking and keel are made of full-length material. His shop has stone and concrete walls, no windows, and a dirt floor. He’s one month into building this boat and figures he has two months to go.

In the shed across from his shop were two large festival boats, one built by his father and one he built. The festival is 1,200 years old and only happens once every four years.

To bend the lower planks he uses a burner, but he spreads rice hulls (nuka) mixed with water on the plank to reduce the charring. He said it took one hour to bend the planks using props, etc. He mentioned this was the difficult part. The planking is .15 shaku thick and he said he could bend in the uwadana without fire. The keel is .30 thick.

He’s built about 200 boats, fishing boats up to 12 meters with the largest 16 meters. In recent years he’s been very busy building boats for festivals and shrines, the result of the disappearance of boatbuilders throughout the region. His frames are kusanoki. He works seven days a week. He was very quiet at first; he just kept working while we watched. Koji san slowly tried to introduce me, explaining that I’d studied boatbuilding throughout Japan. After about an hour he suddenly started asking me questions about whether or not I’d done certain things with my other teachers and how they did things. He’d listen to my answer, say nothing, and continue working. This went on until he announced he was headed home for lunch.

At a restaurant Koji, Akiko and I talked about the island. From a high of 2,000 people it now has 360. Fifteen years ago it was 500. It has become a bit of a magnet for I-turn people (Japan’s term for back-to-the-land types) who can manage to make a living doing some farming, gathering seaweed, or fishing. Its hard to buy a home on the island but rent is as little as 5000 yen ($40) a month or you may live in a house for free in return for maintaining it. For forty years the islanders have been protesting the plan to build a nuclear plant on the island facing the village. On the mainland you can see many infrastructure projects paid for by the electric company but the island has refused all such offers. To accept these offers would give tacit approval for the plant. Islanders have staged protests and been arrested. So far the power company hasn’t been willing to face the protests and start construction.

Lots of stonework on the island.

There is just a single village on the island.

Two small tenma boats Shinsho san built, 13 and 14 feet.

We returned to the shop and spent the last few hours of the afternoon with Mr. Shinsho. At one point he handed me his tsubanomi and had me make a nail hole. He asked more questions and  answered mine. Mostly we talked about techniques and he was interested in knowing what other boatbuilders in Japan did in comparison with his methods.

The bulkheads are through-tenoned into the upper planks. 

Shinsho san said he made this inkline. "Do you use these in America?" he asked.

Both he and Hashimoto (see previous blog post) are benefiting from the disappearance of craftspeople. Shinsho said he thinks he has two years of work. Ironically its a very good time to study boatbuilding in Japan with craftspeople this busy, though with everyone in their seventies and eighties these opportunities won’t last for long.