Decoding the Success of Craft Knowledge Survival: the Roles of Master Carpenter and the Influences from Capital and Habitus in Japanese Carpentry Field

While some formal apprenticeship may have already disappeared with craft knowledge as the learning process of observation, assimilation and emulation are not compatible with current educational attainment. However, Japanese carpentry employs unique transmission-acquisition practices which result in a success to disseminate this implicit craft knowledge despite the shift in innovation and sociocultural situation. This article aims to unfold the underlying structure and interrelations in Japanese carpentry field in order to examine master carpenter as the most relevant unit of analysis of the transmission since they are the most dominant actor who remains active through globalization era and facilitates the survival of this craft knowledge through generations to generations. Therefore, the field-theoretical approach was adopted to help to clarify those arguments as the position in a given field depends on the type, volume, and legitimacy of capital and the habitus, while their actions and practices are the results of their habitus and capital in the field.The finding suggests that master carpenter successfully mobilize all four capital; economic, cultural, social and symbolic, to multiple the effects socially and sustain the dominant position since ancient time to present day despite the new innovation and social change. Since economic capital cannot be reconverted into master carpenter?s cultural, social and symbolic capital, these forms of capital can provide leverage to the possessor tremendously. Master carpenter convert their embodied and institutionalized cultural capital into a control over other actors and also exploit their social capital and symbolic capital to maintain the exclusivity of the field entry which almost could be considered as a monopoly. This results in acknowledgment of their valuable limited inheritance and long-lasting symbolic capital.