Congratulations to Douglas BROOKS (ACC multiple grants since 2008) for serving as the Japanese Boat Consultant for the recent Disney/FX series Shōgun. The bulk of his consulting involved working with the show’s Property Master on authentic boat designs for their fleet of boats and a Japanese warship.

“A number of boat ideas were run past me which I convinced them to drop because they were inaccurate given the time period,” said Brooks. He spent a week on set working long days to help train thirty extras how to use the Japanese sculling oar, and also helped broker the purchase of two Japanese boats built by his students at Bates College from 2019. Set Fabricators built boats to Brooks’ designs out of plywood and then grain-painted them. Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) allowed Disney to make a dozen boats look like three dozen.

The main samurai boat used in the series is based on the lines of senzanmaru, the oldest plank-built boat in Japan (early 1800s) displayed at the Tokushima Castle Museum. Brooks stated, “It was amazing being witness to incredible craftsmanship of all kinds creating the sets." Each of Brooks’ four ACC fellowship experiences brought him to intimately study traditional Japanese boatbuilding in Japan through facets of custom and ritual, and through the lens of other boatbuilding masters.

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All Images by Dean Eilertson