Tanaka Hisao was sold as a young boy to a master dai maker. This was by no means uncommon in the last century and while I am aware that Tanaka sans youth was filled with hardship and the struggle to master the craft assigned to him I never heard him complain about any discomfort or inequity of any sort. He did master dai making and before he was very old was considered by many plane iron blacksmiths as the greatest dai maker alive. Tanaka san was officially granted the title of Living treasure in his seventies, a very young age for such an honor. I met him, and my two other Japanese teachers, at a woodworking seminar in New Hampshire in the early 1980s. Tanaka san, like Fujieada san and Miyano san, was a Mejin no Mejin, a Masters Master. It was my great fortune to have known these great and celebrated craftsmen, all of whom were generous with their time and knowledge and had no reason to be so except out of choice.
These pictures were taken at Tanaka sans shop in Miki City Japan in the late eighties.
Tanaka san at his bench. Traditional craftsmen tended to work sitting on the floor.
In the photographs below, Tanaka san is tuning a hand plane that he has made, making it ready for use.
These are photographs showing his work area, with and without his dai bench in place.
Last is Tanaka san's sharpening station.
Thank you for reading these posts. I hope I have been able to give you a glimpse of something you were not aware of and that you found some of it interesting. For my own part these men were enormously important to me as I came to understand how pathetically narrow my experience was and also that there were, and are, always many ways of efficiently and effectively solving problems and that many of the best are less than obvious. I owe much to these three Shokunin, who treated me most kindly.
