In 2009, Vermont-based boatbuilder and researcher Douglas BROOKS (ACC grants between 2008-2017) traveled to Okinawa for his fifth apprenticeship with a Japanese boatbuilder. He was working with an ACC Individual Fellowship to document the techniques of one of the last builders of sabani, the traditional Okinawan fishing boat. Additional funding for the project came from the Museum of Maritime Science in Tokyo and the Center for Wooden Boats in Seattle.

Sabani are semi-dugouts, meaning they are built by fastening together large cedar timbers and then largely carving the hull. Before World War II these boats were the mainstay of indigenous fishing fleets throughout Okinawa, and actually were true dugouts, carved from a single log. A shortage of materials after the war forced boatbuilders to adopt the current method. By 1970 modern fishing methods and boats made of fiberglass had completely supplanted the sabani. Brooks’ teacher, Mr. Ryujin Shimojo, was in his 80s at the time they worked together and was the last of just a handful of craftspeople capable of building these boats. Shimojo san had built about 100 sabani, using just hand tools, from the end of the war until the late 1960s before he was forced to switch to fiberglass boats.

By the mid-1990s, however, a constituency of yacht sailors, windsurfers, and kayakers had rediscovered sabani and began restoring derelict boats and commissioning new boats from Shimojo san and two other elderly boatbuilders. They began organizing races throughout Okinawa, eventually creating an annual 26-mile open ocean race from Zamami Island to the capitol city of Naha. Now nearly 50 teams have boats, both new and old, and a new generation of younger builders has emerged, including Ms. Kyoko Kunioka, who apprenticed with another builder just before Brooks studied with Shimojo san.

Sabani are notoriously difficult to sail. New teams invariably rig outriggers on their boats to hold them upright. While this makes sabani look like most traditional Polynesian boats, Okinawans never used them. The annual sabani race has two categories: outrigger and traditional, and every outrigger team is working toward the day they can abandon them to sail like the fishermen of old.

Brooks published a book based on his research, Japanese Wooden Boatbuilding, and one section is on building the sabani. His friend Mr. Koji Matano, a boatbuilder on Lake Biwa in Japan, volunteered to translate Brooks’ manuscript into Japanese and design a book. The book has sold out two printings over the years and Brooks and Matano decided to put the manuscript online.

You can find the online manuscript through the two links below:
https://woodenboat.jp/temp/sabanibook-web/index.html
https://timberlinesmallcraft.com/sabanibook/sabani.html
Note: use the back arrow when scrolling through because the manuscript is published in traditional Japanese, reading from right to left.

More information can be found at the author’s web page on sabani:
https://www.douglasbrooksboatbuilding.com/sabani