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## I nheritance of Japan's Traditional Wooden Architectural Technology

Although wooden framework dwellings built by leveraging traditional building methods offer excellent characteristics that recommend themselves for construction in a wet Japanese climate, including their ease of repair for better longevity, addition and betterment, highly skilled carpenters continue to be increasingly aged while number of newcomers to carpentry declines, making it difficult to hand over skills from generations of younger successors.

Under the circumstances, the Carpenter Training School (Daiku Ikusei Juku) has been open since 2003 to rebuild the regime for producing wooden dwellings using traditional building methods and to develop human resources that reinstate the Japanese cultures of craftsmanship and manufacturing.

About 100 youths nationwide, aged from 18 up to 25 (averaging 19 years of age) join Carpenter Training School each year to take threes years of on-the-job training and classwork. In on-the-job training, each student is given hands-on guidance on the expertise and skills of building traditional wooden dwellings by a master carpenter at a housing construction site or other facilities administered by host building contractor's offices (566 firms nationwide in April 2013). Classwork delivers to the students an organized theory of the expertise and skills of building traditional wooden dwellings, in overnight intensive camps held for about 60 days at four locations across Japan. A completion production session is in store for the students in their third year of training. Students from all over Japan get together to build up one wooden framework building in a joint effort in a demonstration of what they have acquired so far. The training curriculum is organized to let students master the fundamental skills of carpentry.

A scene of on-the-job training

Source) (One company) Carpenter Training School

A scene of a completion production session

## ② Efforts directed at the tourism industry

The tourism industry is generally accepted as an attractive workplace, such that it is popular among students as a hoped-for place of employment, but its real labor environment is not necessarily that favored when compared with other industries. The low rate of retention, generally known as the “Hurdle of Three Years,” long working hours and poor working conditions are among the problems that need to be rectified. Utilizing the power of experienced workers who are equipped with excellent skills, as well as securing the opportunities of their employment, would also be necessary. For these purposes, programs designed to foster human resources through collaboration between the industry, educational institutions and the administration, including the launch of an internship model project and the development of a college education program, are under way to stimulate youths’ interest in the tourism industry and deepen their insight into the tourism industry to let the industry come to stay as an attractive workplace (Graphic 206). In the future, it would be necessary to provide youths with opportunities to think about their career so that they can have far-reaching career paths and life plans, as well as cut their working hours and improve their labor environment through an appropriate exercise of labor management or the like.