Japan · Basketry; Bamboo craft; Okinawan heritage
北谷竹細工 (Chatan takezaiku); 琉球竹細工 (Ryūkyū takezaiku)
Okinawan bamboo basketry is the weaving of everyday baskets from hōraichiku (Bambusa multiplex), a clump bamboo with long internodes and low nodes that bends without splitting. Before the war it was a common household trade, with Chatan as a leading center. In Okinawan a basket is a dīru and a flat sieve basket a bāki. The forms were shaped by daily life. The sagijōki is a lidded basket hung from a cord to keep food safe from rats. The nuno-bāra (ūbāra) held split banana fiber for spinning bashōfu thread, and its rim is smoothed so fibers do not snag. The jin-dīru, a roadside vendor's money basket, has a narrowed mouth so notes do not blow away and four small pointed feet so it stands on the ground yet rides on the head. After the war plastics displaced these baskets and better-paid jobs on the US bases drew workers away. 津嘉山寛喜 (Tsukayama Kanki) is a third-generation bamboo craftsman. His grandfather's family moved to Chatan in 1879 and made bamboo work its trade, and after the war his father was the only one left working in the town. Tsukayama helped his father as a boy, but worked on the US bases and in construction until about forty. In 1989 he took up the craft full-time, learning from his father by weaving and unpicking again and again. He later set up his own workshop in Chatan, moved it to Yaeshima, Okinawa City, in 1997, and was certified an Okinawa Prefecture craftsman (県工芸士) in 2002 with a bāki as his test piece. His commissions include the basket for the seedlings planted by the Emperor and Empress at the 1993 National Tree Planting Festival, and the 'Mianda' ritual basket for a priestess of Izena Village (1994). He has also refined the forms and invented new ones, such as lighting and flower vessels. Okinawa City called him perhaps the only person in the prefecture living from bamboo craft (2003), and that description still stood in 2018 and 2023 reporting. Orders wait six months to more than a year.
Risk level: Critically Endangered · Not inscribed. Not designated; the maker holds Okinawa Prefecture certified-craftsman status (2002)
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