CHEERS FOR MECHANICAL DOLLS

In recent years, historians have been heightening our awareness and understanding of the technological know-how and ingenuity of premodern Japan and how this laid the foundation for Japan’s remarkably rapid modernization during the Meiji era (1868–1912), when the country opened up its doors to the West and began actively importing Western technology and civilization. In one of the two essays featured in this section, Suzuki Kazuyoshi sheds further light on premodern Japanese technology. He notes that within a few years of the initial arrival of European firearms on Japanese soil in the mid-sixteenth century, Japan was manufacturing muskets domestically. Moreover, by the turn of the century it had one of the world’s biggest stockpiles of firearms within its borders.

Mechanical clocks were also brought from Europe in the mid-1500s, and before the turn of the century Japan was, again, producing its own. Furthermore, the Japanese clockmakers of those days devised a more complex mechanism, enabling them to produce clocks that worked in accordance with the traditional Japanese method of timekeeping, in which the length of the hours varied depending on the season. This unprecedented achievement bespeaks not only the curiosity and receptiveness with which Japanese welcomed innovations from abroad but also their passion for devising and crafting complex mechanical devices of their own and the high level of technological know-how that enabled them to do so.

This passion for mechanical contraptions continued through the Edo period (1600–1868), but it was refined and developed almost exclusively for the creation of playthings and novelties instead of the development of industrial or military technology. Where the latter was concerned, once the era of civil strife had ended with the ascendancy of the Tokugawa shogunate, the development of firearms was halted and the technology put to use adorning the night sky with colorful and ingenious fireworks.

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The clockmakers’ craft was also channeled into entertainment in the form of karakuri ningyô—mechanical dolls—of various sorts. One of the best known is the tea-serving doll, which astonishes observers even today. This is a sweet-faced figure about 30 centimeters in height holding a tray. When the host places a teacup on the tray, the doll “walks” toward his guest, gently nodding its head, and when the guest removes the cup, it stops. Then, when the cup is again placed on the tray, the doll turns around and returns to the host. There were many others as well, including a doll that did back flips down a stepped platform, as described in Suzuki’s article, and one operated by a spring mechanism that wrote actual characters.

The eighteenth century also saw the publication of a number of books that explained the mechanism of such dolls with the help of diagrams. The 1796 Karakuri zui, noted as the first book in the world to explain a clock’s mechanism in depth, also provided a detailed explanation of the workings of karakuri ningyô, illustrated with scale drawings of each part. This book was so popular that it was reprinted in 1808. And Suzuki was able to use it to reconstruct the tea-serving and back-flipping dolls from scratch.

Interestingly enough, this period was also the golden age of automatons in Europe. The most famous of these was a life-size flute player created by Jacques Vaucanson in 1738. The invention itself has been lost, but records indicate that it was an extraordinary automaton capable of playing 12 different pieces. In addition, the Neuchatel Museum in Switzerland houses a writing automaton designed by Pierre Jaquet-Droz in 1774. In short, around this time Japan and Europe had reached a comparable level of sophistication in their development of mechanical technology and were using that technology to create very similar automatons.

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We might note, however, that while Vaucanson used metal springs and cogwheels for the mechanism of his flute player, the Edo-period artisans who crafted the tea-serving doll and other karakuri ningyô rarely used any metal parts whatsoever. For cogwheels, they used oak and Japanese cypress; for springs, they used whalebone. This cannot have been for want of high-quality steel, since Japanese steel had long created some of the finest swords in the world. Still, the makers of mechanical dolls preferred to use natural, unprocessed materials as much as possible. Practical considerations certainly played a part in this choice, since natural materials were cheaper and more widely available. But the preference for natural materials also relates to the Japanese tendency to view human beings as an integral part of nature. In the Edo period, dolls—and mechanical dolls in particular—were perceived as almost human, and people would cheer their successful feats. Indeed, even today Japanese factory employees tend to view industrial robots not simply as machines but as something akin to co-workers.

A respect for materials and ingredients as nature created them is also characteristic of Japanese cooking, as Kishi Asako points out in the second essay in this section. Japanese cuisine is distinguished by methods of preparation and seasoning that tend to bring out the natural flavor of fresh ingredients. Soy sauce, miso, and vinegar—three of the seasonings most responsible for the flavor of Japanese food—are all created by the natural biological process of fermentation, without additional processing. This emphasis on the natural flavor of ingredients can be considered another manifestation of the Japanese view of humanity as an inherent part of nature, rather than something set above or apart from it. (Takashina Shûji, Professor Emeritus, University of Tokyo)

© 2001 Japan Echo Inc.