Ukidama: The History of Japanese Glass Fishing Floats from Otaru to Oregon

^{FROM NORWAY'S NETS TO THE BEACHES OF THE PACIFIC}

Ukidama (浮き玉) is the Japanese name for the hollow glass balls that once held fishing nets on the surface of the sea. Japanese glass fishing floats were first made in Otaru in Hokkaido in 1910, when the Asahara Glass Works began producing them at the request of a fisheries experiment station, according to the Ishikari Sakyu no Kaze museum in Ishikari City. The idea came from Norway, where the spherical glass float is credited to Christopher Faye around 1840. From the Showa 30s (1955 to 1964) onwards, cheaper plastic floats that did not break replaced glass in Japan, but floats lost from nets have continued to wash up on beaches from Hokkaido to British Columbia, Alaska and Oregon. Otaru, where Asahara began with everyday glassware, oil lamps and floats, is now described by its city government as one of Japan's leading glass-craft production areas.

^{WHERE DID GLASS FISHING FLOATS COME FROM?}

The invention of the spherical glass float is credited to the Norwegian Christopher Faye. The Mjøsmuseet, in its collection record for a float from Biri Glassworks, states that Faye invented it around 1840, and the Hakai Institute in British Columbia gives the 1840s as the decade in which glass fishing floats were first used in Norway. In Norwegian the float is a glasskavl; the Mjøsmuseet catalogues its example as a garnkule, or net ball. According to the museum, such floats kept fishing gear at the surface, including gill nets, lines and seine nets.

Before glass, fishermen used wood. According to the Mjøsmuseet, wooden floats remained the usual type in Norway until about 1860, but because the wood absorbed water they had to be taken off every time the net was hauled and dried before they could be used again. The earliest Norwegian glass floats were bottle-shaped rather than round. Each ball was wrapped in a net of natural fibre so it could be tied to a line or net, and Norwegian glassworks such as Biri Glassworks made them; the float in the Mjøsmuseet collection is stamped B V, for Biri Verk.

^{WHEN DID JAPAN START MAKING GLASS FISHING FLOATS?}

According to a history of the city's glass trade published by Otaru City, glassmaking in Otaru is said to have begun in 1891, when Torazo Inoue opened a new factory in Inaho-cho. The Asahara Glass Works followed: the city gives its founding as 1900 and the Japan Tourism Agency as 1901. Under its founder, Hisakichi Asahara, the works first made everyday glassware, including Satsuma-style cut glass, and, according to the Japan Tourism Agency, hand-blown oil lamps at a time when electricity was not yet common. Otaru City records that in 1910 it began making floats for fishing nets.

The Ishikari Sakyu no Kaze museum, which calls Asahara the originator of the Japanese glass float, states that the works developed the floats in 1910 at the request of a fisheries experiment station. Until then Japanese fishing floats had been made of wood or bamboo; glass made them lighter, more resistant to water pressure and cheaper. Otaru City's account likewise notes that glass floats gave greater buoyancy and pressure resistance than wooden ones. The city dates mass production to the Taisho era (1912 to 1926), when Japan's North Pacific fishery was expanding, and the Japan Tourism Agency records that by the 1920s Asahara Glass employed about 400 people and was one of the largest glassmakers in Hokkaido.

^{HOW WERE JAPANESE GLASS FISHING FLOATS MADE?}

According to the North Lincoln County Historical Museum in Oregon, fishermen first made their own floats from whatever glass was available, mostly recycled bottles, which explains the many shades of green. The Hakai Institute reports that old sake bottles were often recycled into floats, a link to the drink covered in the history of sake in Japanese dining. Fairly large glassblowing companies later developed to supply hand-blown floats, a process that involved hundreds of glassblowers because each float was made by hand. Lincoln City's tourism office gives sizes from two inches to two feet, in shades of green and blue.

A Japanese float in the Corning Museum of Glass, dated 1910 to 1960, was blown into a mould from colourless glass overlaid with red. The hole left when the blowpipe was broken off was sealed with a flat blob of glass. Some floats also carry a maker's mark. A float found on Calvert Island, on the central coast of British Columbia, in May 2018 carried a mark resembling two letters F, one mirrored, which the Hakai Institute identifies as a Japanese character meaning north. It was traced to the Hokuyo Glass Company, which has operated since 1949 in Aomori Prefecture at the northern tip of Honshu.

Glass floats were also made in North America. The North Lincoln County Historical Museum records that American fishermen used German floats off the West Coast in the early 1930s. The Northwestern Glass Company of Seattle, established in 1932, began making hand-blown copies in 1933 but stopped because the volume needed was small. In 1942 demand for shark livers as a vitamin source created a market for gill nets set at depth, whose floats had to withstand high pressure, and Northwestern developed an automatic system for making and sealing them.

^{HOW WERE GLASS FLOATS USED IN NET FISHING?}

Floats kept fishing gear at the surface. The Mjøsmuseet describes them holding up gill nets, lines and seine nets, and the Ishikari Sakyu no Kaze museum notes that Japanese glass floats were used on many kinds of fishing net. In Otaru, the Japan Tourism Agency records, Asahara made its floats for herring nets, and the Ishikari museum states that glass floats supported Hokkaido's herring fishery and Japan's North Pacific fishery from the Meiji era to the early Showa era. The Hakai Institute notes that Japan used glass floats especially for deep-sea fishing in the early 20th century, when glass was a cheap and durable material.

Herring shaped Otaru's waterfront. The Kimura family built the Kimura Warehouse in 1894 to store fertiliser made from herring, which was shipped to the indigo and cotton fields of south-western Honshu, according to the Japan Tourism Agency. It stands on Sakaimachi Street, which the agency describes as Otaru's trade and retail centre until the mid-20th century. The agency records that the herring industry collapsed through overfishing in the mid-20th century, after which the warehouse was used to store dry goods. The North Lincoln County Historical Museum records that Japanese floats lost at sea, some still in their nets, were deposited by the tide on the west coast beaches of North America.

^{WHY DID FISHERMEN STOP USING GLASS FLOATS?}

Electricity and plastics reduced demand for both of the Asahara works' products, lamps and floats. The Japan Tourism Agency records that, as electricity and plastics became widespread, demand for glass lamps and floats fell, and that by 1960 Asahara Glass was the only glass manufacturer left in Otaru. Otaru City's account adds that floats were gradually no longer made as the North Pacific fishery declined and plastic floats appeared. The Ishikari Sakyu no Kaze museum dates the change to the Showa 30s and later, when plastic floats that were cheaper and did not break took over. Lincoln City's tourism office notes that the world's fishing vessels now use buoyant plastic.

The Otaru business survived by changing products. The founder's son later set up independently with a sales shop, and in 1971, under a later owner from the Asahara family, the shop was renamed Kitaichi Glass and began making and selling lamps as nostalgic mementos. In 1983 Kitaichi Glass converted the Kimura Warehouse, the only one of the Kimura family's nine warehouses still standing, into a shop and restaurant. In the shop's Kitaichi Hall restaurant, 167 glass oil lamps are lit by hand each morning, and Kitaichi Glass lamps light the entrance hall of Otaru Station.

^{HOW DO JAPANESE GLASS FLOATS REACH OREGON AND ALASKA?}

The current running along Japan's Pacific coast is the Kuroshio, also called the Japan Current. The American Meteorological Society's Glossary of Meteorology describes it as the western boundary current of the North Pacific subtropical gyre, running close to the eastern coast of Japan, separating from the coast at 35 degrees north to flow east as the Kuroshio Extension, and continuing as the North Pacific Current after the Emperor Seamounts near 170 degrees east split it. Further north lies the Pacific Subarctic Gyre, a counterclockwise circulation from the southern coast of Alaska to Kamchatka. The Seattle oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer, quoted by the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute in 2007, says objects in it tour the North Pacific about every three years.

The same 2007 article reports that the Sitka beachcombers Dean Orbison and his son Tyler count glass floats formerly used on Japanese fishermen's nets among their favourite finds, and that these are becoming rarer. On the Oregon coast, the North Lincoln County Historical Museum in Lincoln City holds collections built by local beachcombers, including floats donated by the late Jim Watson and by Nick Simpson, who has collected for more than 55 years. Floats also return to Japan: the Ishikari Sakyu no Kaze museum's January 2018 newsletter reports the donation of about 1,500 glass floats collected as drift items along the coast of Ishikari Bay between about 2005 and 2017.

^{WHAT ARE GLASS FISHING FLOATS USED FOR TODAY?}

Lincoln City's tourism office describes original glass floats as rare today, and the city runs a programme of new ones. According to the office, the Finders Keepers project began in 1997, when a local artist thought of glass floats as a way to launch the new millennium, and the city sponsored the first season in 1999 to 2000. Visitors came from around the country to search for signed and numbered floats, and area galleries sold unnumbered ones. Finders Keepers floats are now hidden year-round along the city's seven miles of beach for visitors to find and keep.

In Otaru, Asahara Glass is described by the city as the only workshop in Japan that has made floats for more than 100 years, and the Ishikari museum states that the original Asahara works is now the only maker, producing them for interiors and similar uses. The city has 15 glassblowing workshops and factories combined, as well as artisans working in cut glass, burner work, sandblasting and stained glass. In 1979 the glass artist Chiyoji Asahara and seven staff opened The Glass Studio in Otaru, the first workshop in the city to show free-blown glassmaking to the public and let visitors try it.

^{NETSU AT MANDARIN ORIENTAL JUMEIRA DUBAI}

Netsu is a Japanese robata by chef Ross Shonhan at Mandarin Oriental Jumeira Dubai, and Silverfox Studios completed its interior in 2019. The design is a double-height kabuki theatre concept built around the robata grill. The grill is the central stage, and guests watch the grilling from several levels of the restaurant. The restaurant also has an upper bar and DJ lounge. A raised walkway from the back kitchen recalls the hanamichi of the kabuki stage. Outside, horizontal recessed lighting references tiered theatre seating.

The kabuki theme continues in the graphics: 1950s-style kabuki poster graphics are applied to columns and to a wall. The 1950s are also when plastic began to replace glass floats in Japan. The Ishikari Sakyu no Kaze museum dates the change to the Showa 30s (1955 to 1964) and later, when cheaper plastic floats that did not break took over from the glass floats that had served Hokkaido's herring and North Pacific fisheries, and by 1960 Asahara Glass was the only glassmaker left in Otaru.

SOURCES

1. Mjøsmuseet (DigitaltMuseum) garnkule
2. Otaru City 知ってる？ 硝子の街 小樽
3. Ishikari Sakyu no Kaze Museum, Ishikari City エスチュアリ No.55
4. Japan Tourism Agency Former Kimura Warehouse
5. Corning Museum of Glass Fishnet Float
6. North Lincoln County Historical Museum Glass Fishing Floats
7. Hakai Institute A Beachcomber’s Grail
8. University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute Accidental and intentional plastic rides the ocean
9. American Meteorological Society, Glossary of Meteorology Kuroshio
10. Explore Lincoln City Finders Keepers History