Kokeshi dolls from Japan at Japan Museum SieboldHuis

This summer Japan Museum SieboldHuis will host approximately three hundred traditional wooden dolls from Japan. These pretty ‘kokeshi’, with their brightly painted clothes and expressive faces, were all hand-made in the north-east of Japan, in a region of volcanic mountains, hot springs, and forests called Tohoku.

These dolls are widely collected for their simple charm and the variety of character shown in their different facial expressions. There are several kokeshi museums in Japan with very large collections but few really old dolls survive, and the ones in this exhibition were all made in the 20th century. There are currently about 150 kokeshi artisans and during the exhibition a film will be shown of one famous maker,  demonstrating how these special dolls are made.

Running parallel to this exhibition is the photo exhibition ‘The Constructed Landscape. Photos by Shibata Toshio’, where you can experience the beauty of the constructed landscape and the tension between human intervention and the strength of nature as seen by Shibata Toshio. The exhibition ‘Tohoku Girls. Kokeshi Dolls from Japan’ can be visited from Friday June 23 till Sunday September 3rd, 2017. The museum can be found at Rapenburg 19 in Leiden and is opened from Tuesday till Sunday from 10.00 till 17.00. Ticket prices can be found at the website of the museum.

Source: Japan Museum SieboldHuis