Traditional crafts in Japan are beautiful things, but they can also be fragile.
Our business depends on skills that were once far more common and are now increasingly concentrated in the hands of a small group of craftspeople who grow older with each passing year.
So when I get the chance to meet a younger maker who has chosen to revive one of those trades, build a life around it and pass the skills on to others, I get very excited.
In February 2020, I spent ten days on Goto Island with Koichi Miyazaki, a young Japanese cooper.
This is the story of that visit, the tools I used, the bucket I tried to make, and a craft that very nearly disappeared from his community.
Goto Island
Goto is remarkable before you even start talking about woodworking.
The islands lie roughly 100 kilometres west of Nagasaki, far enough from the mainland that they have developed a character all their own.
During the Edo period, Christians seeking to continue practising their faith moved to the islands, where isolated communities were able — with varying degrees of success — to preserve traditions that were heavily restricted elsewhere.
The result is a landscape where Japanese villages and old Christian churches exist side by side.
Seeing a century-old stone church in a small Japanese town is striking, and just a little strange the first time you encounter one.
How Miyazaki-san Became a Cooper
Miyazaki-san arrived on Goto with his family in the early 1990s.
His father was a respected doctor on the mainland, but his parents had decided that they wanted to raise their children away from the pressure and pace of city life.
In their new community lived a well-known bucket maker named Oshima-san.
Miyazaki grew up around him and, as a boy, helped with odd jobs in the workshop. He made his first buckets under Oshima-san's guidance after school and during holidays.
At first, it was simply part of growing up in a small community.
Then it became apparent that Oshima-san would eventually retire without an apprentice to continue the trade.
Miyazaki's father encouraged him to learn as much as he could while the opportunity still existed.
Miyazaki then spent the final year of Oshima-san's working career studying under him full-time. In 2016, Oshima-san formally entrusted the workshop and his customers to Miyazaki-san.
That transition is what I find so compelling.
A craft that might easily have ended with one person's retirement instead moved into another generation.
Why Wooden Buckets Matter
Before plastic and metal containers became commonplace, wooden vessels were part of everyday life in Japan, just as they were in many other parts of the world.
Miyazaki-san's work still revolves around practical objects.
He makes large vessels used for cooling sushi rice and mixing in vinegar before sushi is prepared, as well as smaller containers used for storing dry rice.
The bucket I made during my visit was intended for fermenting miso.
These vessels can become quite large, and because they need to hold their contents reliably for long periods, the way the timber is selected, oriented and fitted matters enormously.
Learning Through His Tools
I used Miyazaki-san's own tools throughout the ten days.
Many of them had belonged to Oshima-san before him.
That alone changes the way you think about the workshop.
These are not just tools purchased for a job. They have already passed through one working life and continue to carry the marks of the craft they were made to perform.
Miyazaki introduced me to planes with both concave and convex soles, which are used to shape the inside and outside surfaces of the buckets.
They are beautifully specialised tools.
A normal flat-bottomed plane would be hopeless on some of these surfaces, while a plane shaped to match the curve allows you to work accurately and efficiently.
The Long Cooper's Plane
One of the most important tools in the workshop is an extraordinarily long plane that is used upside down.
Rather than moving the plane across the timber, the plane remains stationary and the individual staves are worked along its sole.
The plane needs to be extremely straight and considerably longer than the finished bucket is tall.
This allows the edges of each stave to be jointed accurately so that, when brought together, they form a watertight vessel.
The blade itself is equally interesting.
Rather than presenting a completely straight cutting edge, only the central portion runs parallel to the sole. The corners of the blade are relieved dramatically.
This allows the craftsperson to alter the profile of a stave subtly during a stroke, removing more from one part of the edge than another as required.
It is a highly specialised solution to a very specific problem — exactly the sort of tool geometry I find endlessly interesting.
Grain Direction Changes Everything
The orientation of the growth rings in the staves depends on what the finished bucket needs to do.
Because my bucket was intended to hold miso for long periods, the grain was oriented so that the growth rings travelled around the vessel.
This arrangement makes the bucket more difficult to build, but better suited to holding moisture over time.
Buckets intended for less demanding storage can use staves with the grain oriented differently, radiating outwards from the centre.
That orientation can be more visually pleasing and can also make the staves more forgiving during fitting.
It was one of many reminders during the trip that traditional craft is rarely about one “correct” technique.
The material, purpose and expected working life of the object all influence how it should be made.
Then Came the Bamboo Hoops
Once the staves were fitted, everything still had to be held together.
That meant weaving the bamboo hoops.
This was probably the hardest handwork I had to do during the entire visit.
Preparing the bamboo is painstaking enough. Then comes the weaving itself, which is intricate, repetitive and remarkably easy to lose track of.
I did, frequently.
With Miyazaki-san's patient help, though, I eventually ended up with a finished bucket.
And it was beautiful.
Not because I had suddenly become a master cooper in ten days, but because I could finally see how all the different decisions fitted together: the timber, the grain orientation, the jointing, the shaped planes, the staves and the bamboo.
Returning to Goto
I was fortunate enough to return to Goto later and visit Miyazaki-san again.
This time, I collected an order of six of his buckets for use in our workshop sharpening setup.
That meant a lot to me.
Traditional craft can only survive if the people practising it are able to build stable, sustainable lives from their work.
Admiring a beautiful craft is one thing.
Buying the work, using it, teaching with it and putting money back into the hands of the person who made it is another.
Why This Matters to Me
I spend a great deal of time around Japanese tools, but tools only make sense when they remain connected to the crafts they were designed to serve.
Spending ten days with Miyazaki-san reminded me of that very clearly.
The planes in his workshop are not curiosities. The buckets are not decorative exercises.
They are working tools and working objects, part of a tradition that continues because one person chose to learn from another before the opportunity disappeared.
That is the part of traditional craft that I find most hopeful.
It does not need to remain frozen in the past.
It needs people willing to learn it, practise it, improve at it and make a living from it.
Miyazaki-san is doing exactly that.
And I am very pleased that, on another island a long way from Goto, his handmade buckets can now become part of the way we teach sharpening and Japanese woodworking in our own workshop.
In a small way, the craft keeps travelling.
