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1735
三 · Wood — Yakumo, Hokkaidō

Carved bear

Hokkaidō's most famous carving was copied from a Swiss souvenir.

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Carved bear — Yakumo, Hokkaidō
Yakumo, Hokkaidō · Since 1924

In 1924 Tokugawa Yoshichika came back from Europe with a carved wooden bear he had bought in Berne, and showed it to the farmers on his estate at Yakumo. Winters there were long and there was no field work; he suggested they carve.

They did, and within a generation the bear with a salmon in its jaws had become the thing every visitor carried home from Hokkaidō.

Carved bear — from the left
From the left

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  1. Write to the house. A person in Fukuoka replies, usually within a day or two.
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Carved bear — at the workshop
At the workshop
How it is made
  1. 木取りKidori

    Katsura or linden, cut so the grain runs the length of the animal.

  2. 荒彫りAra-bori

    The bear is found in the block with an axe and a large gouge.

  3. 毛彫りKebori

    Every hair is a separate chisel cut. This is the whole difference between one bear and another.

  4. 仕上げShiage

    Eyes and claws set or cut, then oiled. Rarely painted.

The surface is the whole craft. The fur is not smoothed — it is left as hundreds of short gouge cuts laid in rows, so the light catches each ridge and the animal reads as fur from across a room.

It is worth saying plainly that this is not an Ainu tradition. Ainu carving is its own art with its own subjects, and the souvenir bear is a twentieth-century industry that grew up beside it.

Carved bear — from the right
From the right
Walk around it
Carved bear — FrontCarved bear — LeftCarved bear — BackCarved bear — Right
Notes
Began
1924, from a bear bought in Berne
Method
Gouge cuts left visible as fur
The salmon
Standard from the Shōwa years
Where
Yakumo, Hokkaidō
About the place

The most precisely dated craft in this house. In 1924 Tokugawa Yoshichika, whose family held the farm settlement at Yakumo, came back from Europe with a carved wooden bear he had bought in Switzerland, and gave it to the farmers as something to make and sell through the winter when there was no field work.

Yakumo · Carved bears →Ask us to find one →The North · By region →

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