A yen for collecting

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/12/2005 (7313 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

SADAKO Sasaki was two years old when an atom bomb fell on Hiroshima. Nine years later she was diagnosed with leukemia, the “atom bomb disease.” Sadako’s best friend, Chizuko, told her of a Japanese legend that stated that anyone who could fold 1,000 paper cranes would be granted a wish. Before she passed away at age 12 on October 25, 1955, Sadako, in a bid to get well, managed to complete 644 cranes.

A series of letters penned by the ailing girl during her final months was published in a book called Kokeshi, named for a type of Japanese doll Sadako’s classmates gave her. (After Sadako’s death, those same students also folded her final 356 cranes, all 1,000 of which were eventually buried by her side). American writer Eleanor Coerr used Kokeshi as the basis for her book, Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, a children’s tale that Winnipegger Kathleen Lukas often referred to while teaching Grade 4 social studies at Collicutt School in the late 1980s.

“I used to read that story to my class and I could never pronounce the word ‘kokeshi,’ ” she says. “And then in 1990 I went to Japan to teach English and the very first doll I was given by my home-stay family was a kokeshi.”

That doll — a limbless, wooden figurine reminiscent of all kokeshis — became the basis for a collection of Oriental dolls of every size and description that now rest in a display cabinet in Lukas’s Seven Oaks home. At least a dozen are those she brought back after her year abroad.

“Omiyage (gift-giving) is very big there — this whole thing started from people giving me dolls as gifts,” she says.

Included among her glassed-in kokeshis and geishas — some of which were picked up locally at the Japanese Cultural Centre — are a set of darumas. These roly-poly dolls, fashioned from papier-maché, carry a legend all their own.

“What you do when you get one is paint in the left eye and make a wish,” instructs Lukas. “And if your wish comes true, you paint in the right eye.”

A visitor can’t help but notice that all Lukas’s darumas have both eyes fully covered. Lukas, now a phys-ed teacher at Forest Park School, will only acknowledge that yes, her dreams did indeed come true, nodding towards one of her two children, eight-year-old daughter Erin.

“Once you start learning about Japanese dolls, it’s hard to stop,” says Judy Shoaf from her home in Gainesville, Fla. “They are beautiful in themselves but also reflect centuries of Japanese history.”

Shoaf, formerly an executive member of the now-defunct Japanese American Doll Enthusiasts (JADE) club, maintains a website devoted to ningyo — the pursuit’s proper name.

Dolls as gifts, says Shoaf, a director at the University of Florida’s Language Learning Center, are key to the whole Japanese culture, with certain types evolving specifically as gifts for particular people or occasions.

“Price is rough,” she says when asked to put a value on the marketplace. “I have been browsing on Yahoo-Japan and the best ones there, either distinguished antiques (pre-1860) or the works of famous 20th-century artists, will top $2,000 (US) easily.”

“In fact, a fine 18th-century karakuri doll purchased by a friend of mine carried a price tag of $35,000.”

Shoaf mentions that hobbyists with deep pockets tend to focus on dolls finished with a white oyster-shell lacquer called gofun.

“Those are my favourites, too; however, a devoted enough collector may pick up anything that strikes his or her fancy, providing it shows vigour and humour in its creation.”

Shoaf adds that another acquaintance of hers recently bought a doll that was essentially a dressed-up eggshell.

“Usually she goes for very high-end dolls but she just couldn’t resist it. Of course, it was an old and unusual and very artistic eggshell.”

For more information on Japanese-doll

collecting, visit Judy Shoaf’s website at www.clas.ufl.edu/users/jshoaf/Jdolls/.

If you’d like to share the story of your collection with our readers, please contact David Sanderson at david.sanderson @freepress.mb.ca. His column appears

bimonthly.