KARACHI: The Pakistani movie song ‘Gurriya Japani’ by the late Ahmed Rushdie starts playing in the head as one entered the main hall of the Japan Information and Culture Centre where the five-day Ningyo: Art and Beauty of Japanese dolls travelling exhibition is under way.

Organised by the Consulate-General of Japan in Karachi and Pakistan Japan Cultural Association (PJCA) in cooperation with the Japan Foundation, the exhibition opened this week.

Not all Japanese dolls are delicate female forms in kimono as one may imagine. At the exhibition one also encountered quite scary looking dolls in warrior armours and also character dolls that one finds in Japanese anime and games.

They all reflect the customs of Japan and the aspirations of its people as they possess distinctive regional attributes and have over the centuries developed in many diverse forms.

67 dolls are on display at Japanese consulate

‘Ningyo’ literally means human shape in Japanese. The doll culture, which has been cultivated over the long history of Japan, has been introduced at the exhibition through a total of 67 carefully selected dolls, which have been divided into four sections.

These are ‘Ningyo to pray for children’s growth’, ‘Ningyo as fine art’, ‘Ningyo as folk art’ and ‘Spread of Ningyo culture’.

‘Ningyo to pray for children’s growth’ included paper dolls, dolls designed to protect babies from any misfortune that may befall them, dolls believed to possess super-human strength, etc.

‘Ningyo as fine art’ included some very cute dolls fashioned after plump babies, dolls created by Buddhist sculptors, dolls offered to the gods at festivals and dolls dressed in garments actually made of woven fabrics.

‘Ningyo as folk art’ comprised dolls made without the use of expensive materials while the ‘Spread of Ningyo culture’ section had dolls used in traditional puppet theatre.

Earlier, the Consul-General of Japan in Karachi, Isomura Toshikazu, inaugurated the popular Japanese dolls travelling exhibition, which presents a comprehensive introduction to Japanese doll culture, from Katashiro and Amagatsu, which are considered to be the archetypes of dolls in Japan, to local dolls that reflect the climate and anecdotes from across the country, to dress-up dolls that are beloved in Japan today as toys, and scale figures that are highly regarded around the world.

The exhibition concludes on Friday.

Published in Dawn, March 2nd, 2022