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Seven gods in one boat, and only one of them is Japanese.
2 pieces on the shelf ↓Ebisu, Daikokuten, Bishamonten, Benzaiten, Fukurokuju, Jurōjin, Hotei. They arrive together, by boat, on the night the year turns.
Only Ebisu is from here — the fisherman with a sea bream under one arm and a rod in the other hand, god of honest trade and, in Osaka, of business. Daikokuten was the Hindu Mahākāla, black and terrible, long before he was the smiling one standing on two rice bales with a mallet. Bishamonten was Vaiśravaṇa, guardian of the north, and still wears armour. Benzaiten, the only woman, was the river goddess Sarasvatī, and the water is still in her — she holds a biwa, and everything about her is music and flow. Fukurokuju and Jurōjin came out of Chinese Taoism. Hotei was a real man: Budai, a Chinese monk who died in 916 and carried everything he owned in one cloth sack.
A god of destruction is smiling in your kitchen. His name is Daikoku. In India he was Mahakala: black-skinned, wrathful, hung with skulls. But somewhere on the long road through China to Japan, he started smiling. Now he stands on bales of rice, with a mallet that shakes out treasure. He's one of the Seven Lucky Gods. And only one of the seven is Japanese: Ebisu, the fisherman with the sea bream. The rest came from India and China. A god of war in armour. A river goddess with a lute. And Hotei, who was a real man: a wandering monk who carried everything he owned in one sack. Every New Year, the seven sail in together on a treasure ship. So on the second night of the year, people slide a picture of that ship under their pillow. The poem printed on it reads the same forwards and backwards. And your first dream tells you what the year will bring. If you'd like the seven at home, Maison Homura can find them. Link in profile. Sweet dreams. The god of destruction is watching your rice.
Tokoname Clay Bells, ShichifukujinVintage · Made in Japan · Tokoname shudei clay · set of seven bells · 5 cm$180 · Free shipping to 32 countries
Kutani Daikokuten and Ebisu, HachimanVintage · Made in Japan · Kutani porcelain, Hachiman kiln · pair · 27 cm$460 · Free shipping to 32 countriesThese are the pieces we have in Fukuoka today. After something else? Tell us here.
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Seven separate models, each with its own attributes fixed by four centuries of use.
Cast one at a time in Takaoka, not as a group.
Chased by hand — the faces are where a poor casting shows.
Coloured as a set, so the seven match when they stand together.
Nothing about that assembly is tidy. Three countries and at least three religions in a single boat. It is also exactly why the group is Japanese — they were gathered up in the Muromachi period out of whatever was to hand, and the number was fixed at seven to match the seven virtues.
The boat is the takarabune, the treasure ship. On the second night of the new year you slide a picture of it under your pillow, and whatever comes is the hatsuyume — the first dream, the one that is supposed to tell you about the year ahead.
In bronze they are almost always made as a set of seven in a fitted paulownia box, and Takaoka has been pouring them for four hundred years. Sets get split up: one god goes to a grandchild, one gets broken, one is sold alone. A complete seven, with its box and its papers, is not a common thing to find.
In 1609 Maeda Toshinaga built a castle at Takaoka and settled seven casting families in a quarter beside it, the district still called Kanayamachi — the metal-workers' town. (Where exactly the seven came from is given differently in different accounts.) The castle was abandoned within six years. The foundry quarter was not, and it is still there.
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