In the sun-kissed Yaeyama Islands of Japan’s far south, a centuries-old boatbuilding tradition speaks to the heart of the islands’ independent-minded spirit.

Photographs by James Whitlow Delano

Tomohiro and Akemi Yoshida in their sabani boat off the northern coast of Ishigaki. — Tomohiro and Akemi Yoshida in their *sabani* boat off the northern coast of Ishigaki.

Following Yoshida Tomohiro through a tunnel of thick pandanus, I emerged on a deserted white-sand beach where the boatwright’s wife, Akemi, was already busy raising the sail of their sabani. Fitted with an outrigger and a single mast, the craft’s sleek, charcoal-black hull was no more than eight meters long. But as a symbol of the maritime heritage of Japan’s Ryukyu Archipelago, it couldn’t loom larger.

“The sabani is core to island life and teaches you about the richness of the unique culture here,” Yoshida told me as a gentle breeze filled the junk-style sail, pushing the boat away from the beach. He held the main sheet (the line that controls the sail’s position) in one hand, and a steering paddle in the other, taking us out to sea over coral reefs that seemed close enough to touch. Perhaps sensing my concern, Yoshida said, “The sabani are built for these waters, with a very shallow draft. We can manage a depth of just 50 centimeters!”

I’d come to the southernmost island group in the Ryukyus, the Yaeyama Islands, to learn more about the sabani and the boatbuilders who are keeping the tradition alive. Yoshida told me that he and Akemi moved to the subtropical island of Ishigaki from Tokyo a decade and a half ago. He had developed an interest in woodworking while repairing antique furniture; when city life became too cramped, they decided to drop everything and start afresh in Ishigaki, where they now live just steps from the beach on the island’s rural northern peninsula.

Sabani are rigged with junk-style sails; Yoshida Tomohiro wearing handmade wooden goggles called mikagan. — *Left to right:* Sabani are rigged with junk-style sails; Yoshida Tomohiro wearing handmade wooden goggles called *mikagan*.

Sabani boats are held together by bamboo nails and butterfly joints.

Back on shore, Yoshida brought me to his open-sided workshop in the village of Hirakubo for a look at the sabani construction process. The boats are built without metal nails or screws; instead, the planks of Japanese cedar are held together using butterfly joints, bamboo nails, and a special oil that causes the wood to expand and create a watertight seal.

“A sabani can last half a century or more because there is no metal to rust,” Yoshida explained as he carefully chiseled a shallow butterfly-shaped recess between two planks.

On the other side of the workshop, two students of his were busy building miniature sabani, just as Yoshida had done under his own sensei Arashiro Yasuhiro, a celebrated Ishigakan sabani builder who passed away last year at the ripe old age of 96. As with full-size sabani, the students had fashioned their little practice hull by slowly bending two cedar planks with turnbuckles while softening the wood with boiling water to prevent it from cracking. It’s a two-person process.

“I felt it was my mission to pass on this wisdom without interruption for future generations,” Yoshida said. “I make the skills available to everyone. The boatbuilder’s way of thinking is very useful for living in the modern world. I believe that a deep knowledge of sabani will lead to enrichment of life here.”

Students building a miniature sabani hull at Yoshida Tomohiro’s workshop.

In the early 18th century, the Ryukyu Kingdom — present-day Okinawa Prefecture — was a vassal state sandwiched between two powerful neighbors: Qing-era China and a rising power within isolationist Japan, the Satsuma Domain, based on the island of Kyushu. Both demanded heavy tributes in local goods and materials from Ryukyu to gain access to their markets and to stave off outright colonization. Timber, in particular, was in high demand, outstripping the ability of the islands’ forests to renew themselves naturally. To combat deforestation and soil erosion, a royal advisor named Sai On crafted a conservation plan so far ahead of its time that it’s still referenced today in Japan and the United States. Among its stipulations was a ban on the construction of traditional dugout canoes (kuribune), which required large-girth trees to build.

Necessity being the mother of invention, the archipelago’s fishermen had to come up with a new kind of vessel that consumed less timber. And so evolved the plank-sided boats that would one day be called sabani. Despite their modest size, these hardy craft were designed to slice through waves and cover long distances, regularly voyaging to the extremes of Okinawa. There are even reports of sabani traveling as far as the ports of China and Southeast Asia for fishing and trade.

The Yaeyama Islands are as remote as Japan gets; they lie closer to Taiwan than to Okinawa Island, much less the mainland. The principal islands are Ishigaki and Iriomote, which are connected by the Sekisei Lagoon, home to Japan’s largest coral reef system. And right in the middle is Taketomi, a 5.5-square-kilometer coral atoll with short ferry rides connecting it to its neighbors. Intrigued, I stopped there for a night on my way to Iriomote.

I’m glad I did. With just 400 people, Taketomi boasts one of Okinawa’s few preserved traditional Ryukyu villages — a maze of terra-cotta–tiled houses hemmed in by walls of stacked coral blocks. The roof tiles are held in place by thick lines of mortar to secure them during the frequent typhoons that lash the island. Shisa lion-dogs, believed to protect against evil spirits, stand sentry above each house as a final precautionary measure.

Adding to Taketomi’s throwback allure was the fact that my visit coincided with the Tanadui Matsuri, a six-century-old harvest festival. Over the course of the celebrations, more than 80 traditional dances and kyogen (comic plays) were performed on the grounds of Yomochi Utaki, a sacred site dedicated to the gods of fire and agriculture. Suddenly, brightly clad villagers transformed the sleepy lanes, coming and going in happy gaggles, transporting visitors back to when the Yaeyama Islands were the remote, deep south of an island kingdom famed for its gentle hospitality.

A traditional dancer on the coral island of Taketomi.

Festival performers walking home along Taketomi’s sandy streets.

Kunioka Kyoko, Japan’s first female sabani boatbuilder, working on a slab of Japanese cedar at her workshop on Iriomote Island.

“Sabani are alive,” Kunioka Kyoko told me the next day at her workshop on Iriomote. “The collective wisdom passed down in the woodworking techniques, the dialogue with the wood, and the interaction with the sea all live on in the boat.”

Iriomote is perhaps Japan’s wildest island, with 90 percent of its terrain clothed in rain forest and extensive mangroves. At less than 300 square kilometers, it’s also the smallest habitat of any wildcat on earth, the endemic and critically endangered Iriomote cat, whose population is estimated to be around 100. Iriomote is often called “the Galápagos of Japan.”

Kunioka has the distinction of being Okinawa’s first female sabani boatbuilder. Like Yoshida, she moved here from the Japanese mainland many years ago and studied with Arashiro Yasuhiro. Until then, women were not allowed to build sabani. “Some people think it is bad luck for a woman to be involved with boats,” she recalled. “But Arashiro-san, he was not bothered by any of that. He said, ‘I want you to do it if you want to, even if you are a woman, or not an Okinawan.’”

I watched as Kunioka began penciling a slab of cedar with outlines from a blueprint of her own design. “The lines made from a single board are functional and elegant,” she said. “Following the shape of the wood is very similar to sculpture.”

Later, I boarded a different kind of boat for a sightseeing cruise along the Urauchi River, the longest waterway in all of Okinawa Prefecture. It ran green and clear between banks lined by primeval forests and dense mangroves. An osprey launched itself from a tree, its white underbelly flashing in the sunlight.

The Urauchi bent through hills, then narrowed as hills gave way to mountains. Our boat eased slowly past tree ferns and feather-frond wild palms until it could go no further. I thought back to how Kunioka-san had described Iriomote with the poetic simplicity of the Japanese language: “Nature and the creatures here are overwhelmingly kind. I think of this place as a safe nest where I can rest my wings.”

I also thought of my time with Yoshida. “Sabani are everything to these islands,” he had said. “My dream is to build them until the day I die.”

Yoshida captaining one of his boats off Ishigaki.

Yaeyama Islands How-To

GETTING THERE

There are several flights a day to Ishigaki from Tokyo, Osaka, and Naha, Okinawa’s prefectural capital. Once there, you can island-hop to Taketomi and Iriomote on the frequent local ferries.

WHERE TO STAY

Hoshinoya Taketomi Island
Taketomi’s only luxury resort comprises 48 wooden villas that take their cues from traditional Ryukyuan architecture (from US$405 a night).

Hoshino Resorts Iriomote Hotel
This family-friendly 139-room property is fronted by the best swimming beach on Iriomote (from US$170 a night).

Jusandi
Skip Ishigaki’s bigger, blander resorts and instead book one of Jusandi’s five chic modernist villas, each with its own swimming pool (jusandi.jp; from US$940 a night).

BOAT TOURS

On Ishigaki, Yoshida Tomohiro’s Yoshida Sabani boatyard offers 90-minute sabani tours around the Hirakubo Peninsula, starting from US$55 per person.

This article originally appeared in the March/May 2024 print issue of DestinAsian magazine (“Out of The Blue”).

Where Sabani Boats Still Sail

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