===== Background to the Creation of the Archive =====

Nearly sixty years ago, I belonged to a solid model club in Osaka.  
After being active in that club for several years, I temporarily left model making because of university entrance examinations, but returned to the world of solid models some years later.  
Although I no longer belong to that club, solid models have remained one of the areas of model culture in which I have had a long-standing interest.

At university, I have been involved in research and education in the field of education.  
At the same time, I also had a desire to study and organize model culture as a subject of research.  
In particular, I felt that the history, techniques, and makers’ records of wooden aircraft solid models in Japan included important materials that were at risk of being lost before they had been sufficiently organized.

I had known Mr. Yasuichi Takami since my early teens, and learned many model-making techniques from him.  
I also inherited materials left by Mr. Masami Ōmachi through Mr. Takami.  
Mr. Ōmachi’s notebooks contain records related to model making, and they are valuable materials for considering postwar Japanese solid model culture.

I came to know Mr. Kazu Fukuda through the model club.  
Later, Mr. Fukuda moved to a distant area, so I did not have many opportunities to meet him in person.  
However, our exchanges deepened after I helped him publish his construction records on websites and forums.  
In that process, I received many photographs and materials from both Mr. Takami and Mr. Fukuda.

The value of solid models does not lie only in completed works.  
The maker’s judgment and skill are also expressed in the process itself: selecting materials, reading forms from drawings and photographs, carving, correcting, painting, and gradually approaching the final image.

This archive has been created as a foundation for preserving such processes, records, and judgments, and for considering Japanese solid model culture from multiple perspectives.  
For me, the Japanese Solid Model Archive is also an attempt to give concrete form to a study of model culture that I had long wished to pursue but had not been able to develop sufficiently.