Excerpt from School of Hard Knots by Alex Hanson
The typical apprenticeship with a Japanese traditional
boatbuilder lasts six years, during which an apprentice can
expect to spend a lot of time sweeping the shop floor and
sharpening tools while watching the master ply his trade.
Work is conducted in silence, questions are answered
elliptically, if at all, and, by the end, the master will have
withheld key pieces of knowledge that the apprentice is
expected to acquire through guile or outright theft.
Read the excerpt. Then choose the correct way to complete the paragraph.
A central idea in the excerpt is that the Japanese art of boat building may be lost to future generations. The
underlined detail shapes this idea by showing that the system for learning Japanese boat building is too
for modern students, which means that future generations
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Even in Japan, where traditional crafts are revered, this
system is too grueling, too much at odds with modern life.
to survive. It is no wonder, then, that as a generation of
Japanese boatwrights has retired, their knowledge has
retired with them. Vermont boatbuilder Douglas Brooks is
trying to ensure that the centuries-old designs for fishing
boats and water taxis don't follow these craftsmen to the
grave.
For more than two decades, Brooks has researched
traditional boatmaking in Japan, and has done short,
nontraditional apprenticeships to record boat designs.
Ordinarily, no Westerner would have a hope of learning in
a few weeks what usually takes years of patient
observation to acquire.
This article was first published in May/June 2013 issue of
Humanities, which is published by the National