A New London Exhibition Celebrates Japanese Master Carpentry

The works of Tsunekazu Nishioka, who passed away a quarter century ago and is considered Japan’s greatest “miyadaiku,” or master carpenter, are now on display.

“The Craft of Carpentry: Drawing Life from Japan’s Forests” opened at Japan House London last month and runs through July 6, celebrating the work of this classic woodworking technique and one of its greatest practitioners. “The exhibition culminates with a life-size reconstruction of the 18th-century Sa-an Teahouse, which resides inside the Daitoku-ji temple complex, in Kyoto,” the online newsletter Air Mail recently reported. “A masterpiece of rustic wabi-sabi architecture, the structure was designed to evoke a monk’s spiritual searching in the wilderness.”

The digital weekly newsletter Air Mail wrote that “in December 2020, UNESCO added the ancient art form to its list of humanity’s intangible cultural heritage, honoring the traditional skills, techniques and knowledge for the conservation and transmission of wooden architecture in Japan.”

It said the move was a response to a “crisis facing the hallowed culture of Japanese woodworking,” where such work was becoming increasingly rare.  

Born in 1908, Nishioka – nicknamed “Oni,” meaning “Devil,” because he was so stern – “was the last generation in his bloodline to assume the highest office of his profession: chief carpenter of Hōryū-ji, a seventh-century Buddhist temple in Nara Prefecture that also happens to be the oldest wooden structure in the world.”

Air Mail’s report said that “Harmony and respect are paramount when connecting the material world of wood to the sentient realm of spirits. Rejecting the nail – viewed as a tool of violence – Japanese master carpenters instead employ a range of complex joinery techniques, called kigumi, that fit wooden pieces together like a jigsaw puzzle.”

The show’s version of the Sa-an Teahouse was hand-built by Akinori Abo, a master carpenter who is said to be able to plane a wood shaving thinner than the thickness of a human hair, according to Air Mail.

Marcelo Nishiyama, the associate director of Kobe’s Takenaka Carpentry Tools Museum – a center dedicated to preserving Japan’s daiku heritage – and the exhibition’s curator, told Air Mail “Ultimately, I believe that the tradition of Japanese carpentry is created by always considering the very essence of what is to be inherited.”

Image: Japan House London

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