The paper cabinet
Hollow, light, made of paper and paste, and meant to be given away. Most of what sits on this shelf was made to carry a wish from one person to another, and to be let go when the wish was done.
The monk with no arms
A daruma is a portrait of Bodhidharma, the monk said to have carried Zen from India to China. The story goes that he sat facing a wall for nine years, until his arms and legs wasted away. So the doll has none. Only a round red body and a stern face.
Weight a round thing at the bottom and it cannot stay down. Push it over and it rolls back up. In Japan that became a promise: fall seven times, stand up eight.
One eye now, one eye later
A new daruma is sold with blank white eyes. You paint in one when you make a wish, and the other when it comes true. A daruma with one eye is waiting, sometimes for years.
When the new year comes, old daruma are carried back to the temples and burned together, and new ones are bought. Most of Japan's daruma are made in Takasaki, north of Tokyo.
Why so much red
Smallpox was once thought to be brought by a god who disliked the colour red. Sick children were dressed in red and given red toys. The red cow of Aizu, whose head nods on a string, comes from that hope, and from a legend of a red cow that helped haul the timber for a temple in the ninth century.
Tigers were given for a reason of their own. A tiger, the saying goes, travels a thousand ri and comes home again; in wartime, mothers asked women in the street for one red knot each on a cloth for a son going to war, and on some cloths the knots formed a tiger. Every face is painted freehand, which is why no two look quite alike.
Paper
Layers of it, pasted over a mould and left to dry until they hold a shape on their own.
Ask us to look
Tell us what you are after. We live in the country where these things are, and we will go and look for it.
- You describe itWhat you are after, roughly what you want to spend, and whether there is a date it matters by. Vague is fine — “a clay bell for the year my daughter was born” is enough to start.
- We go and lookMorning markets, dealers we know, auction houses, and families clearing an old house. Sometimes the thing turns up the same week. Sometimes it takes months. Sometimes it never turns up at all.
- You decidePhotographs in daylight, measurements, condition described plainly including the chips, and what it would cost delivered to your door. If it is not right, you say so and that is the end of it.
On the shelf now:Daruma · 7Hakata Hariko · 2Akabeko · 1Inu-hariko · 3
Next cabinet
Clay
One kiln lets the fire decide. Another painted in five colours for fifty years, then went quiet, and nobody knows why.
Open the cabinet →