When summer ends they can be used to winnow rice or direct local sumo. End of fall, no trouble! Winter fires usually need some gentle fanning to help them get started, and before you know it, spring will have arrived when an uchiwa is a perfect but coy serving tray. Anyway, anytime of the year, a first class uchiwa can come in handy.
| 13 | GUMMA |
| DARUMA | |
Gumma-ken is probably best known for its DARUMA. Sankaku-daruma, conical pairs made in neighboring Niigata, covered fairly well the historical background of just whom daruma dolls are though to represent. Made of papier-mache (hariko in the vernacular), strips of paste-impregnated paper are laid one on another till the basic desired shape is formed. Set aside to dry thoroughly, decorative enameling is added to create the familiar rotund, armless and legless doll. Legless he is indeed, having supposedly lost the use of them through nine intensive years of meditation but armless? Not quite! His arms are tucked conveniently out of sight in the folds of his brilliant red dhoti (Indian style robe) so he only appears to be minus both.
Gumma-daruma have blank eyes. This isn’t strange at all when the whole truth is known. New daruma are always sold with both eyes white blanks as the purchaser usually wants to make a special invocation for help to the gods. When that wish is made known, one eye is painted in. This is usually done with some festivity. Many a huge daruma receive just one eye in hopes of success but, one wonders what you do with a one-eye daruma when your wish is denied?
Fulfillment of the wish creates another happy situation where amid further festivities, the second eye is ceremoniously painted in place and the daruma is whole again. His fearful countenance and whiskered face just doesn’t come off with whitened sockets blankly staring. Painted in place, the doll finds its rightful place in the Japanese pantheon of gods.
One more aspect to daruma that bears mentioning is weighting at the base so that however much it veers to one side or the other, it always rights itself. Daruma of this type are also called okiagari koboshi, which literally means the bonze (monk) who gets up easily. The saying “nana-korobi-yaoki,” or seven falls and eight rises stands for the try, try again spirit synonymous with the undaunted daruma.
Size depends on your pocketbook as they range from intermediate sizes to a gigantic 90 em tall. You can get one at a Daruma-ichi (market) like the one pictured on page 131.
| 14 | SAITAMA |
| FUNADO-HARIKO | |
Saitama-ken borders the Tokyo metropolis and is in many respects wedded to the city. Commuters by the hundreds of thousands stream from and to abodes in Saitama daily to and from stations of work somewhere in the sprawling maze of Tokyo’s streets. Being so close by doesn’t especially invite the continued production of true folk art but still there survives in this prefecture a perfectly charming toy with a long history.
FUNADO-HARIKO is the vernacular name of these papier-mache dolls with bobbing heads. The variety of personages made in this type doll is quite numerous. Hari-ko is the Japanese term for papier-mache whatever the form. Strips of paper soaked in a rice paste solution are laid atop one another to fashion simple dolls, an exotic range of beasts and of course daruma in sizes ranging from tiny to gigantic.
Some hariko use moulds into which are pressured paste-dampened paper strips but most are freely built. A practised hand knows just how much and where to put each ready strip of moistened paper. Pinched into shape by agile fingers, the damp form is sun-dried before decorative painting is done. Simple forms take on added dimensions when the lines of a kimono are added and even the simple white band indicting a fundoshi (loincloth) helps to make the doll more real.
What really gives each doll “life” is the bobbing head which has been fashioned separately and is attached to the main body via a single string. In mobile style, heads bob and twist with the slightest stir of air currents. A perfectly stationary doll that suddenly moves must activate the awe of any child even in these days of battery-run toys. But then, these simple dolls hark back to a time when there were no batteries and even the simple clock spring key-wound toy of the late 19th century had yet to be invented.
These engaging “live” dolls are not the rough and tumble type today’s youngsters are used to, but then not everything has to be handled to be appreciated. Funado is the Saitama suburb where they first originated.
| 15 | NAGANO |
| HATO-GURUMA | |
Hato in my dictionary is either pigeon or dove. Considering how the bird depicted in this folk art offering symbolizes peace as well as love, I’ll opt for it being a dove.
That established, this Nagano-ken toy is called a HATO-GURUMA or dove cart. It was first produced about 130 years ago in Nozawa-shi by Anshin Kawano but production stopped after his death and wasn’t resumed till nearly the end of the Meiji era (about 1900). Nozawa is in an area abounding with onsen (hot springs) and Zen temples. Many flock there all the year round to indulge themselves in either one or the other. Visitors always want to bring home some remembrance of their travels and so hato-guruma were reborn.
The full name is Zenkoji Hato-Guruma which reads Good Light Temple Dove Cart. Whatever its religious implications, the two-wheeled woven bird is appealingly evocative of the way in which a dove pecks while eating. Loosely axled wheels gives it a rolling gait that combines with a trailing bumper to recreate a sense of naturalness. The repetitive action of searching out food that the dove and pigeon make gives them the appearance of being hard working. Hato-guruma are thus associated with industrious effort. Ownership of one of these handmade toys will purportedly bring you copious good luck and good health every day of your life. With that kind of come-on, who wouldn’t want to have one just in case?
Woven of natural fiber, the current problem in Nagano (especially nearby Nozawa) is the lack of the proper vine called akebi.
The akebi’s hard sinewy vine makes for durable goods of many types. Anything made from the vine falls in the category of akebi-zaiku including hato-guruma. Autumn finds collectors of this vine combing the hills. The long strands are then cleaned and debarked. It’s white understands resemble raffia, and likewise are made easily pliable when put into water for a short time. They are woven when damp.
Hato-guruma come in two sizes, the smallest easily cupped in your palm, while the largest is lifesized. With two black specks for eyes and a sharpened branch for a beak, hato-guruma lack only a pair of spindly legs to fully resemble the real bird. But then, if you had two very fine wheels, you probably wouldn’t need legs either.
| 16 | KANAGAWA |
| KOMA | |
Not far into Kanagawa-ken lies the village of Isehara where Oyama koma are made. Koma means top, and there probably isn’t a country in the world where spinning a top isn’t part of a child’s growing-up memories.
In Japan, the number of top styles figures nearly 100. The differences are mainly in painted designs, much like the major differences between kokeshi is not in their shapes but rather their painted stylizations. The Oyama koma is a rather sturdy type having a large solid wood disk with two protruding spindles. The upper portion is where one loosely attaches the spinning rope while the lower one is a spinning point upon which the weighty top will dance madly to its own circular patterns.
There’s something about the balanced, circuitous dance a top follows to its final anxious twists.
