Modern Era
Silk-skinned or "mask-face" dolls became a popular craft in Japan in the 1920s and 1930s, allowing the individual to design elaborate kimono for dolls representing women of various periods of Japanese history, particularly the Edo period. Dolls of this type continued to be made and were a popular item for servicemen and tourists to bring back after World War II, though they also might choose dolls representing similar subjects made with gofun faces.
Bisque dolls are made of fired clay. Fukuoka is a traditional center of the manufacture of bisque dolls, and Hakata ningyō are famous throughout Japan.
Anesama ningyō and shiori ningyō (literally "big sister dolls" and "bookmark dolls," respectively) are made of washi paper. Anesama ningyo tend to be three-dimensional, whereas shiori ningyō are flat. Anesama ningyo often have elaborate hairstyles and costumes made of high-quality washi paper. They often lack facial features. Those from Shimane prefecture are especially famous.
A hybrid of anesama ningyō and shiori ningyō, called shikishi ningyo, has become popular in recent years. Shikishi ningyō are a type of Japanese paper dolls made with figures and scenes and are mounted on shikishi, a rectangular fancy cardboad about a square foot (about a tenth of a square meter) in size.
More recent and less traditional Japanese dolls are ball-jointed dolls (BJDs), whose growth in popularity has spread to the US and other countries since the advent of the Super Dollfie, first made by Volks in 1999. BJDs can be very realistic-looking or based more on the anime aesthetic. They are made of polyurethane resin which makes them very durable. These dolls are highly customizable in that owners can sand them, change out their wig and eye colors, and even change their face paint. Because of this hands-on aspect of customization, they are not only popular with collectors, but also with hobbyists.
Read more about this topic: Japanese Traditional Dolls
Famous quotes containing the words modern and/or era:
“It is obvious that all sense has gone out of modern marriage: which is, however, no objection to marriage but to modernity.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“It is not the literal past that rules us, save, possibly, in a biological sense. It is images of the past.... Each new historical era mirrors itself in the picture and active mythology of its past or of a past borrowed from other cultures. It tests its sense of identity, of regress or new achievement against that past.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)