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Tonegawa Takasebune - Edo/Meiji period Japanese river cargo boat, 1/72 scale

The Takasebune is a large cargo river boat, of which there were various types across Japan. The Tonegawa Takasebune were just one of many types of boats that plied the intricate network of the Tone river, but it was among the largest, measuring up to around 27 meters in length and was said to have a carrying capacity of up to 900 bushels of rice, or about 54 tons. My model is a 1/72-scale build of a 60-foot, with a carrying capacity of about 500 bushels of rice, or about 30 tons.

 

I’ve been interested in these boats for some time, and have been gathering what information I could find about them through web searches and a few books. Finally, I started working on this one. It's a bit on the small side, being only about 10" long overall and 7" tall, but it's scale compatible with my Higaki Kaisen and Kitamaebune models.

 

After spending a long time making all the cargo, I finally decided it was loaded up enough to call it complete.

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4 Album Comments

jlefever

jlefever

Posted

Looks fantastic. You're creating an interesting collection.

 

JIm

Harvey Golden

Harvey Golden

Posted

Beautifully done!  May I ask which books have information on such boats? I've tried to find detailed books on traditional Japanese boats, but have come up with hardly anything save for a couple of superb books by Douglas Brooks. 

-Harvey

catopower

catopower

Posted

Thanks Jim, Harvey, for the nice comments.

 

Harvey, about the only information available, aside from boats that Douglas Brooks has worked on, is in Japan and it's all in Japanese. And, even in Japanese, they mostly tend to be text heavy and discuss their use, rather than the boats themselves and commonly have very few illustrations.


For this particular model, I bought a couple books that I spotted on Amazon Japan and I lucked out. One of them had two drawings in it, and one of those had a side and top profile of a boat, but no cross sections. It was enough to work with, while the details I had to piece together from drawings and photos in the other book, plus what I could find on Japanese web searches of museum models and old period photographs.

 

Message me if you haven't visited my website on the subject, as I list resources there and can give you more info.

Harvey Golden

Harvey Golden

Posted

Thank you!  That is very helpful. I'll check out your website-- thank you again!

Best, Harvey

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