Edo Wazao Fishing Rods for Sale Updated

Edo Wazao Fishing Rods for Sale

top image — This example of *wazao*, the traditional Japanese bamboo fishing pole, is a rare masterpiece made before World War II past the father of a master, Saochu, who is at present in his mid-eighties. When Saochu was immature, he lost most of his family and all of their poles in a bombing during the war. A customer gave this case to Saochu for inspiration. Its handle slice (the commencement from the left) is so straight that information technology can stand on its finish.

Story and photography by YUKARI IWATANI KANE

Some years agone, my cousin in Nihon, a small-scale man with a passion for line-fishing named Tomoki Koharu, told me that he was preparation to become a maker of Nippon's traditional bamboo angling poles. The market for them was small, and Tomoki said information technology was impossible to make a living at information technology, just patently he had fallen hopelessly in honey with this centuries-old tradition.

The poles that had become the target of my cousin's obsession are chosen Edo wazao, because the craft originated in Tokyo, known at the time equally Edo. The poles are prized for their delicate lacquer end and collapsible portable form, which allows them to be enjoyed both every bit an exquisite tool and as a piece of work of art. Today, a small, but avid group of fishermen uses the smallest versions of these poles to fish for tanago, a freshwater species no bigger than a couple of inches. There is no reel, and the line is dropped, not cast. Like nearly fishing around the earth today, this is a catch-and-release sport. In this case, all the same, the goal is to hook the smallest fish, not the biggest.

The ideal wazao must have the flexibility to bend with the pull of the fish without breaking. A fine example of such a pole is being demonstrated past Shuhei Matsumoto, who is descended from the country'southward nearly notable wazao makers, the Tosaku family.

Judged simply past performance, a wazao cannot touch the strength, flexibility, and efficiency of a single piece of carbon cobweb, which is the material used for most fishing poles and wing rods today. Only a wazao possesses a sure integrity. The essence of fishing, of course, is a solar day spent outdoors—bonding, if you will, with nature. For wazao aficionados, I learned, it only makes sense to utilize tools that come from nature.

I was proud of my cousin for taking upward a noble profession that requires years of training. Having grown up in Japan, I knew of a number of traditional crafts that were struggling for survival. I assumed that my cousin's involvement would be welcomed past the wazao masters because it meant that their craft would survive. His reality, I soon learned, was much more complicated.

Fishing for tanago requires the tiniest of hooks. My cousin Tomoki'southward master, Judaisaku, made these with the thinnest of piano wires.

As my cousin, Tomoki, peered into this dumbo bamboo thicket, he explained that this forest is a prime number example of how overgrown Nippon'due south remaining stands of bamboo have go. The all-time forests today are known to be in Chiba, a prefecture next to Tokyo, but craftsmen are very secretive well-nigh the precise location of their favorite hunting grounds.

"I spent all dark thinking about it to no avail," he wrote on his Facebook page one twenty-four hour period, regarding his struggle with a particularly difficult bamboo cutting technique. "I'm going to read a principal's book every bit I become to bed. #dreamingofbamboo." In the winters, he uploaded pictures of forests where he went to fodder, searching for the perfect stem of bamboo.

Over fourth dimension, I learned that he was also plagued with a deep dubiety and fear. "In a few years, the masters will be gone, and their globe will exist gone with them," he wrote at one point. "It'south … frightening to remember that I'thou pouring my life into a trade that can't provide a living."

The Tosaku family unit, which operates this wazao shop, founded the Edo-style wazao craft seven generations ago. Customers non just buy poles hither, they also regularly bring them here for maintenance when, say, a pole becomes kleptomaniacal or the lacquer wears off.

Even when a craftsman goes hunting for bamboo himself, just a pocket-size percentage of his finds might be usable, because so many bend or discolor in the drying process. Others are often compromised past a issues infestation that isn't discovered until subsequently. Yet others, like this lamentable stalk, are then kleptomaniacal that they're unsuitable even if they are healthy.

All over the land, it is widely known that Japan's famed apprenticeship organisation has broken down. The reasons are myriad, but the end result is that the old masters tin can no longer afford to support apprentices. If the wazao industry is an illustration, the masters have now put themselves into a Catch-22: They are unwilling to compromise their craft by modifying traditional training methods; at the aforementioned fourth dimension, they won't admit the work of younger craftsmen—because they hadn't trained them.

By this bespeak, the average age of the dozen or so remaining makers who are agile in the wazao guild is most 70 years old. Not a single one has an apprentice. In the oldest pole-making family, the son of the last principal chose to become a businessman rather than a pole maker. Although the arts and crafts has only three craftsmen under the age of 50, including my cousin, simply one had been invited into the guild.

All of this struck me as bizarre. Effectually the earth, Japan is synonymous with the idea of adroitness in its most hallowed form. And the country'south artisans, likewise as their works, have never been more respected than they are today. Yet, hither was a craft where its masters didn't seem to care well-nigh the futurity of their ain profession. I decided to return to Japan to find out why.

PERFECTION IN SIMPLICITY

I started my inquiry at the workshop of Saochu, the pinnacle wazao craftsman still working today. It took a small-scale phenomenon to get this meeting—Saochu agreed on the condition that one of his customers, a major wazao collector, exist present. My cousin joined us, primarily because he didn't want to miss an opportunity to hear the great ane speak.

Now 85, Saochu has become a legend, and he only makes poles for those he considers worthy. In an industry where most fishing poles sell for a few hundred to a few g dollars, his best is rumored to accept sold for $100,000. But he is the exception. Later on thriving for generations, the wazao industry almost complanate in the belatedly 1970s when it was nearly obliterated by the introduction of carbon fiber rods. Since then, prices for well-nigh Edo-mode bamboo poles have remained virtually unchanged, leaving their makers unable to go along up with rising costs of living. While tanago angling has enjoyed a small resurgence in the last decade, a craftsman with a decade of experience makes less than $30,000 a year. My 42-year old cousin withal lives at home with his parents because he can't afford his ain place.

Saochu admits that he has more than bamboo than he volition ever be able to apply in his lifetime. And at his historic period, that means a lot will be left unused. Industry watchers are curious almost who will inherit this rare and valuable stash.

Saochu proved to be a difficult interview. When I asked almost his technique, he responded vaguely that it was about artistic sensibility. On questions about his standards, he deflected me. "It'southward difficult to say in front of another pole maker," he said, glancing at my cousin. If he didn't like a question, he became silent and looked away. He was too hard of hearing, a handy disability in his case.

The ane time Saochu perked upward was when he was showing me his family's poles. "Nobody move," he said as he presented a masterpiece. As we remained still, he laid its many pieces out reverently, admiring the way an ancestor had lacquered the pole with trivial raised dots, in a design known equally "sesame design."

The Edo-wazao is estimated to have started 228 years ago, by a samurai named Tosaku Matsumoto. All of today'due south elevation masters trace their roots dorsum to Tosaku. From the offset, Edo-wazao were a luxury item for the wealthy, for whom fishing had been a pop pastime akin to polo or golf game. While the working class used rough, bootleg bamboo poles, nobility, kabuki masters, and prominent politicians used rods tailor-made to each flavor and fish species.

Underneath their gorgeous lacquer, the bones parts to these poles might look relatively simple, but don't let that fool yous. Equally with then many Japanese crafts, the mark of mastery lies in hiding the complexity of the job, to not show it off. When perfection is achieved, the finished particular should await very elementary. These principles apply in affluence with wazao.

The platonic wazao is perfectly round, and directly as a ruler. As preparation, craftsmen exit every winter to collect hundreds of the straightest, strongest, prettiest bamboo they tin notice. Bamboo contains a lot of oil and water, and then before whatever structure can begin it must exist heated in a fire until excess oil rises to the surface, where information technology tin exist wiped off. To become rid of the concluding remnants of moisture, it is then stale outdoors for three months and indoors for another three years. Without this step, the bamboo doesn't attain its maximal strength.

Once the bamboo has fully dried, information technology has to be straightened, which is washed past heating the bamboo over hot charcoal, then torqueing it bit past bit in a wooden mold. At this point, it's time to assemble the pieces for a pole–a step known equally kirikumi, which is the about difficult and crucial part of the whole procedure.

This exquisite pole was fabricated past the fourth-generation Tosaku master and his oldest son. The owner, a threescore-twelvemonth quondam veterinarian, is an avid collector who told me that he owns about 300 Edo-way line-fishing poles. He buys some to employ, others to enjoy just as art. This one is an instance of the latter. He admires its simplicity, and the mode its joints line up perfectly—an extremely difficult feat to pull off, peculiarly today with bamboo supplies in such decline.

Kirikumi begins with the craftsman looking through his collection of bamboo for perfectly matching segments. Once he's made his choices, which can involve upwards to 20 different pieces fatigued from hundreds if not thousands of different stalks, he has to cut each one so they fit together seamlessly.

What makes kirikumi so tricky is that bamboo doesn't grow with this kind of uniformity in mind. Not only are there unlike species throughout a woods, but on every tree, the joint spacing, thickness, curves, and fiber qualities are dissimilar.

During my conversation with Saochu, I had to read between the lines to get my answers, but I knew that he had struggled to achieve success. He entered the craft at age 19, and it took him 4 decades to feel like he knew what he was doing. He wasn't about to share his hard-earned status hands.

Notwithstanding, since the survival of the craft was at pale, didn't he feel some obligation to pass on his knowledge? "Young craftsmen will proceed making poles, and they'll get better on their own," he said with a note of indifference. "No i gets worse."

At 89 years old, Judaisaku is the oldest wazao craftsman alive. He lives and works in a 2-room apartment by himself, but his eyes and legs are starting to weaken. The box-like enclosure behind him is where he dries his poles later they are lacquered. Because lacquer requires moisture, Judaisaku sprays water inside to continue the environment steamy.

These tools, called yanagiba, are used to hollow out the bamboo. Considering the inside of bamboo is delicate and easy to fracture, craftsmen start with a very small-scale yanagiba, to gently brand a starter hole, then gradually work up to the bigger tools. Yanagiba are an example of artisanal tools that are no longer existence made.

THE LOST Woods

One of the few stories that Saochu did share was about his process for bamboo selection. He often struck deals with owners of bamboo forests to get the offset pick; even so, he said, it was a race to get the all-time quality bamboo.

This made me curious to see what differentiates good bamboo from the bad. And so I asked my cousin to take me to a wood. It was March and the season for bamboo cutting had just ended. With the onset of warmer temperatures, he warned, a lot of the bamboo would probable exist damaged or infested past bugs. But I insisted.

We drove to a forest almost his hometown, parked, and afterward walking merely a few hundred feet nosotros were surrounded by bamboo. Tomoki pointed out the stalks that were too weak; others were as well old, gnarled, or crooked. The goal, he explained, is to notice strong but relatively immature stalks—the all-time are only a few years onetime, which however have flex. After inspecting one after some other, he declared the spot to be worthless.

DWINDLING SUPPLIES

~~Due west~~azao makers tend to keep their best foraging spots secret; those who could beget it used to travel to the mountains of Kyushu, in southern Japan, which offered the all-time bamboo. Some worked with middlemen who would evangelize bamboo by the truckful. Caretakers of these forests culled the country to make sure that each bamboo had plenty of room and sun to grow stiff and straight. "It'southward the same as farms and forests," said Tomoki. "You can't go good bamboo if they don't get enough lord's day or ventilation."

Today, however, the decline in crafts that utilize natural materials like bamboo have fabricated it a waste matter of fourth dimension and money to cultivate these forests. And then nearly have long since given style to homes and apartments. (Bamboo forestland makes prime real estate because it tends to be at higher altitudes, with nice views and lots of sunday.) "If you look effectually, there are still a lot of [bamboo] forests in Japan," Tomoki said. "But pole making requires the very best, and that kind of bamboo is rare."

Judaisaku received this document when he completed his apprenticeship at the Tosaku workshop in 1958. The document holds special pregnant for the former master because it's what gave him permission to start selling his poles under the name Judaisaku.

To brand matters worse, the land'due south lacquer industry has likewise declined (without proficient lacquer, a wazao's finish will not shine or age properly). Lacquer is made from sap, collected from theurushi tree past making minor slashes in the tree'southward trunk and running the sap into buckets. While getting brewed into lacquer, the sap, which is toxic, blackens the easily and can get out a worker's eyes badly swollen. Today, only five or six people in Nippon even so collect urushi sap, said Kazuo Akiba, a director at the Association for the Promotion of Traditional Craft Industries in Tokyo. As a outcome, lacquering tool makers take likewise disappeared. By this point, lacquer has gotten and then expensive that many craftsmen use Chinese lacquer, which they find to exist cheaper in both toll and quality; the effectively Japanese lacquer is so saved for the finish.

Bamboo is straightened using a wooden mold called tamegi. The mold is made of carmine wood (noted for its hardness), and is traditionally handmade by the craftsman himself when he is starting time starting out.

Bamboo can be pushed through wooden holes to straighten information technology fifty-fifty further. Considering wazao are made of many different segments–upward to 20 or more than–a jig like this needs a wide range of sizing options.

DREAMS OF REVIVAL

Apparently, plenty of other craftsmen are now suffering from shortages of basic resources. While bamboo crafts have all but disappeared, lacquer fine art designers around the country (particularly in regions such as Wajima, Aizu and Tsugaru) are concerned that Japanese urushi might one 24-hour interval be a thing of the past. Elsewhere, makers of Japanese fine art panels, which apply rice paper and cloths, are having difficulty getting the kind of rice paper they need. And tool makers are disappearing in a diverseness of crafts. Many artisans now take to learn not only their craft but also how to make the tools for their craft. The downward spiral has taken its toll. Of Nihon's i,500 officially designated traditional crafts, 400 of them, or about 25 percent, no longer exist.

Japan has seen all this coming for a while. In 1974, the government passed a law to protect Japanese crafts, and Akiba's clan was formed a year later. In the years since, the group has given traditional craftsmen financial support for preparation, and helped promote their crafts, both domestically and overseas. The programme has had mixed results, however. Fifty-fifty when the group has been able to interest one person in a new concern opportunity, the senior craftsmen in the industry often quash the thought. "Craft worlds in full general tend to be closed but the old masters are particularly bourgeois," Akiba said.

The reasons for the decline abound. No matter how good they may be, craftsmen take been unable to compete with modern goods that are cheaper, more fashionable, and easier to use. Meanwhile, few young people are joining these professions, partly because they don't desire to put in long, backbreaking hours for and then piffling return. Those who are willing to work this hard struggle to discover masters who can beget to rent them. Every bit a result, families that have run artisanal businesses for generations now encourage their children to pursue more lucrative careers.

A RITE OF PASSAGE

Despite Judaisaku's advancing historic period, he can still create the tiniest details in a fine wazao, thanks to his magnifying visor. After all his years of experience, Judaisaku has become quite an inventive maker–an attribute that, ironically enough, is not admired in this ultra-traditional craft.

As my grasp of the situation deepened, I felt my cousin's frustration, but I too felt that I was missing something nigh why senior craftsmen wouldn't take on apprentices. To help me understand, my cousin took me to see his own primary, Judaisaku, age 89.

From the moment I walked into Judaisaku's small, 2-room flat, I saw how profound a craftsman's training experience can be. Even though Judaisaku left his apprenticeship a half-century agone, he wore an outdated, full-throttle beard in memory of his great master. On the wall backside him hung a yellowed, handwritten document from 1958 attesting to his skills and granting him permission to make poles nether his ain name.

In a finishing bear upon, craftsmen wrap silk thread around the female cease of each of the many bamboo pieces that will later fit together to become one pole. Functionally, the threading reinforces the area. When it's painted over with lacquer, it as well creates a distinguishing design feature.

Judaisaku still remembers his final test—an examination of his poles past x senior craftsmen. "They were a terrifying sight," he said. "They lined up in a row, and one by i, they would turn my pole around in their hands and comment on how round or straight it was."

Every bit we talked, I began to appreciate the traditional Japanese meaning of the word "apprentice." It was not simply a term for someone the masters were training. Information technology signified a rite of passage, and a deep bonding feel. Apprentices lived and worked side past side with their masters for years—typically with no pay other than room and board. They might have gotten browbeaten sometimes for their mistakes, but they ultimately took care of each other.

Judaisaku'south apprenticeship days, pictured here, started in the 1950s. The photo in the center is of the 4th-generation Tosaku chief. Judaisaku admired him so much that he adopted the same beard.

Toryo—the heir credible to the legendary Tosaku line—uses an iron filing rod to file downwards the inside of his bamboo. The play tricks is to get the pieces to fit smoothly and securely, but non so tightly that the user has to force the parts together.

Since today'due south economic imperatives no longer support such a culture, traditional Japanese crafts find themselves in a true no-man'southward land—unable to sustain an quondam system, merely without feasible alternatives for a new ane. The awkwardness of this reality was made articulate by Tomoki's relationship to Judaisaku. While he considered Judaisaku to be his master, Judaisaku didn't consider him an amateur. If pressed, Judaisaku would describe Tomoki merely as someone he was teaching. Even and then, Tomoki said, Judaisaku wrestled with his determination to accept Tomoki on equally a student, because he didn't desire to be responsible for sending a young man into a dead-finish business. Tomoki said all the wazao masters felt more than or less the aforementioned way.

The Japanese discussion "shoganai" popped into my head. Nothing tin be done. Information technology tin't exist helped.

SURVIVORS

Despite the myriad difficulties, there are some rays of promise—primarly in the Tosaku family, which founded the arts and crafts. In 2015, the 6th-generation one thousand master died at the historic period of 95, merely not earlier he trained his swell nephew, who goes by his trade name Toryo. Now 30, Toryo is the industry's last formal apprentice, slated to take on the family'due south 8th-generation mantle.

Toryo is a man of few words, just when I visited he said plenty to make it articulate that he carries the brunt of the entire industry on his shoulders.

Coming from the Tosaku line, Toryo has advantages that other young wazao makers can merely dream of: a solid customer base, the total bankroll of his parents, a workshop with an ample supply of tools, and the best bamboo money can buy–many of them harvested at a fourth dimension when the bamboo forests were properly manicured. And, in a footstep toward modernity, in tardily 2015, the family launched a retail Web site (see below), which Toryo's twin brother manages.

Tanago angling—the quest to catch the tiniest fish you tin can—is expert even in ditches like this 1. The trick is to notice areas where the fish are breeding. On this particular day, half a dozen other fishermen shared our spot, but none of them were using Edo-manner wazao. The poles were bamboo, but most were using crude, handmade items.

Nevertheless all of this may not exist plenty to give Toryo security. Although he'south been making poles for 12 years, many of his family unit'due south biggest customers are scrutinizing his progress closely, looking for signs of whether he tin rise to his slap-up uncle's level of talent. Toryo does programme to take on an amateur ("Ideally information technology would be my kid," he said), but none are on the horizon. His father jokingly asked me if I knew of a nice girl who would be willing to ally into a family of craftsmen with few prospects.

Clearly, these craftsmen aren't giving upward. On my way out, when I mentioned to Toryo's blood brother, Shuhei, that another aspiring maker, Tomoki, was my cousin, he asked me to give him a message: "Gambatte," he said. Hang in there.

Afterward we finished fishing, Tomoki transferred my catch into this glass showcase, and so I could take a photo. The yellow strip at the lesser of the instance is a ruler, so you can see if you really did snag the tiniest grab of the 24-hour interval.

Boosted Resource

If the minimalist approach to fishing appeals to y'all—or if you're already a devotee, and would like to explore the earth of loftier-end bamboo fly rods—please see our sidebar to the correct, about keeping angling simple.

To larn more about Japan's efforts to preserve traditional crafts, visit the Association for the Promotion of Traditional Arts and crafts Industries.

If you tin can negotiate a website in Japanese, here is the shop for Tosaku, the state'due south longest running family that makes traditional bamboo poles.

And some other Tosaku store run by a relative.