Unplugged Japanese Lantern

Mitch Peacock recreates a set prop from Akira Kurosawa’s film Sanjuro

Traditional Japanese paper lantern with wooden frame.

Do you ever hit pause for a woodworking moment? During a visit to a dear friend, we watched the film Sanjuro, directed by Akira Kurosawa of Seven Samurai fame. In one scene, Sanjuro (Toshiro Mifune) takes tea in front of a Japanese lantern, and I couldn’t help but pause the action, study the lantern and resolve to make one as soon as I could. I can’t help but stretch my woodworking skills wherever possible, and the lantern’s corner joints were an obvious place to do this. Should you wish to make a similar lantern yourself, then there are easier ways to construct these corners, so please don’t be put off.

Japanese lantern plan

Blueprint of a traditional Japanese lantern with measurements.
Close-up of a wooden lantern with grid design.
1. I designed a three-way mitre, with hidden internal joinery, comprising a halving joint between two pieces, with the third piece having a tenon that stabs through the halving joint. It’s not a joint that I’ve come across before, and I feel it will give good service in this application
Carpentry mortise and tenon joints on a workbench.
2. Because the joint was new to me, I made a practice piece, and referred to it often during the layout and cutting of the eight corner joints of the lantern. I chose to use ramin for the majority of the build, with English oak for the base. Ramin is easy to work, and will take the fine joinery well, while oak will give great figure to the large base
Woodworker using a hand plane to shape wood.
3. The well acclimated stock was broken down and prepared to accurately squared component blanks
Woodworker using a hand plane on a wooden board.
Hand plane on workbench with wooden dovetail pieces.
4. Kumiko for the lattice were worked in batches, which really speeds the work up
Woodworker using hand plane tool on a wooden plank.
Woodworking tools on workbench with measuring paper and ruler.
5. When repeating joints, it pays to leave marking gauges set throughout to ensure consistency
Hands working with woodworking tools and blueprint.
6. With the gauges set and tools sharpened, it was time to start work on the lantern frame. The corner joints are the most difficult part of the build, and I wanted to get these completed first. If I slipped up, I could reduce the lantern dimensions slightly, to save wasting material
Corner joint of wooden furniture assembly.
7. Although I aim to produce consistent corner joinery, working entirely by hand can throw up slight differences in fit, and so I labelled and fitted each joint as a set. So long as I kept track of the pieces, then assembly would go smoothly. Now for a confession. In my haste to get started, my design was a little sketchy, and I neglected to allow for easily fitting the translucent material within the lantern frame. It was only once I dry assembled it that the realisation hit. Thankfully a lightbulb moment was not far behind, and I was soon attaching a shallow fence to my favourite wooden rebate plane
Woodworker using a hand plane to smooth wood.
8. With the joinery prepared for the corners, clamping the frame members between dogs for running the rebates, wasn’t an option, and being so slim they couldn’t protrude high enough from the vice for the standard rebate plane fence. A few minutes later, problem solved. Before gluing the lantern frame, the kumiko lattice needed to be prepared, and appropriate mortises chopped in the frame
Stack of wooden joints on workshop table.
Hand measuring wooden workpiece with a square tool.
9. One vertical and one horizontal frame member were first marked out for the mortise positions, and then all the remaining mortises were directly copied from these
Measuring and marking wood with a marking gauge.
10. All 32 mortises were then sized with a mortise gauge, before chopping to depth
Woodworking: Creating mortises and tenons on wooden pieces.
Person measuring wood with a metal ruler.
11. The kumiko, first vertical and then horizontal, were clamped together to mark out for their halving joints and stub tenons
Person measuring wood with a marking tool.
12. I used a kumiko to directly space off the width of the halving joints from the initial try-square position, rather than measuring with a ruler, as I find this to be both faster and more accurate
Woodworking bench with tools and wooden grid assembly.
13. Notice how the halving joints are alternated, and the lattice is woven together. I am a relatively recent convert to scorching wood when aiming for a rich black effect, and have yet to be disappointed
Burning wood plank with a blowtorch in workshop.
14. A medium-sized propane torch proves to be both fast and controllable, but do remember to take appropriate safety precautions, such as wearing breathing protection and having a fire extinguisher on hand. Personally I don’t use gauntlets, which I find cumbersome, but this practice is not to be recommended. After scorching the lantern parts, loose soot was lightly sanded and wiped off with white spirit, prior to sealing with lacquer
Painting wooden dowels on a workspace table.
15. The four lattice sections were then assembled. I noticed that they fitted easier after scorching. Of course, too much lacquer and their joints would have become very tight
Wooden lattice framework under construction on workbench.
16. Now it was time to take a deep breath, and assemble the lantern. Gluing 32 mortise and tenons, and the eight, three-way mitred corners, all in one go is no mean feat. The corners were the most important, with all mating surfaces receiving a covering of glue. So long as each lattice mortise got at least a drop of glue as well, the lantern should be sound, and rattle free, and so it proved to be. With the lantern assembled, it was time to build the stand. I didn’t have a wide enough board for the base, so I cut one board across, and then ripped one half down its centre
Applying glue to a black picture frame corner.
Carpenter using a hand plane on wooden plank.
17. These three pieces were jointed, then glued together, resulting in a good looking panel from which to prepare the base. This was sawn to size, and the edges planed and profiled to about 80°
Woodworking project with clamps and glue drying.
Person using hand drill on wooden board.
18. The inside dimension of the lantern gave the spacing of the two uprights of the stand, and with that now fixed I was able to bore and chop through mortises in the base
Peacock feather drawing on wood, signed "Mitch Peacock 2020".
19. Because the lantern dimensions will remain virtually fixed, due to its frame construction, it is wise to space these mortises along the grain of the base, rather than across it
Woodworking tools clamping wooden pieces together for glue curing.
20. Blocking was glued towards the bottom of the two uprights, positioned to form the main shoulders of their tenons
Tracing woodworking patterns onto wood pieces.
21. A simple cardboard template was then used to help mark the shape of the feet …
Person cutting wood with a handsaw.
22… before sawing these out. Saw marks were cleaned up with a card scraper and files, and the edges bevelled. The stand draws its design from Japanese torii gates, with a through cross rail, and a shaped top that serves as a handle. The cross rail was made reasonably deep to help keep the stand square, but I reduced the size of the through tenon, mid-mortise, just for aesthetics
Wood piece being held together by an orange clamp.
23. This through tenon protrudes enough to act as a support for the main lantern, which is simply registered on a pin. The top of the stand sits on stub tenons at the ends of the uprights
Marking wood for precise measurement with pencil and square.
24. Its characteristic shape was set out using a flexible steel rule, and a 5:1 dovetail marker
Man woodworking with a frame saw.
25. Curves were sawn with a bow saw, and smoothed with bench plane and spokeshave
Woodworker chiseling wood, secured with an orange clamp.
26. The mortises were chopped before the top curve was cut, giving better support. The final piece of the stand is the lamp rail, which should be positioned such that the light source is just below centre in the lantern
Unlit tea light candle on dark wooden shelf.
27. I chose to create a tea-light holder in this rail, which can utilise either paraffin or battery lights. The rail has a stub tenon at each end, which mate with mortises in the uprights
Woodworking project pieces prepared for assembly.
28. With all the stand parts scorched and lacquered, assembly took place in one go, with the cross rail and lamp rail glued first, before the uprights were glued in the base, and the top was attached
Woodworking project with clamps in a well-lit workshop.
29. With no time to spare, the assembly was checked for square, and then left to cure
Cutting tools and rulers on a wooden workbench.
30. The lantern could be lined with shoji paper, however I chose to use a 2mm-thick, light defusing, plastic sheet. All four pieces were first cut to fit the lantern’s rebates, and then the vertical edges mitred to fit together in the corners. This way the pieces held each other in place, and no additional fixing was required
Close-up of wooden mortise and tenon joint.
31. To support the lantern at the top, and to allow it to be removed easily, a round wooden peg pushes through a hole in the upright, into a blind hole in the top section of the lantern. I couldn’t be happier with the result and I will definitely be holding on to, and using it
Japanese-style wooden lantern on wooden table.

Further reading

How to Make an Incense Burner


PHOTOGRAPHS BY MITCH PEACOCK

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *