Niigata Prefectural Museum of History (Niigata Kenritsu Hakubutsukan), Japan

Japanese Tub Boat

In 2002 as part of a project partnership supported by the Kodo Cultural Foundation (Kodo Bunka Zaidan) and the Nippon Foundation (Nippon Zaidan) an apprentice from Sado Island and I built a Japanese tub boat in a gallery at the museum. The project was the center of an exhibition on the history and ethnology of these boats, and our participation was part of a larger project to train a Sado Island craftsman in this indigenous craft. Later, my apprentice and I built a second tub boat on Sado Island and these projects formed part of the research for my book The Tub Boats of Sado Island; A Japanese Craftsman's Methods, which was published in 2003 in English and Japanese. The book was written to provide a detailed description of how these boats were designed and built. A competent woodworker should be able to build a tub boat following the text and illustrations.

For more information about this boat see my Japanese Boats page. For more information about the book see my Research and Publications page. For a link to the Niigata Prefectural Museum of History visit: http://www.nbz.or.jp/eng/index.php/en/