So what is a sabani?

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

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

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.