Clay Figurine Excavated from Kabukuri Ebisuda, Tajiri Town, Toda District, Miyagi Prefecture

One Figurine, an Important Cultural Property since 1981

Clay Figurine Excavated from Kabukuri Ebisuda, Tajiri Town, Toda District, Miyagi Prefecture (土偶, Dogu) is a Jomon-period archaeological object held at 13-9 Ueno Park, Taito-ku, Tokyo, listed as an Important Cultural Property on 9 June 1981. The listing is as an Important Cultural Property, not a National Treasure, and the owner is the National Institutes for Cultural Heritage.

The quantity is one. 9 June 1981 is the day the gilded bronze staff head became a National Treasure, eighty years after its earlier listing.

The Agency records that the Ebisuda site lies on a low hill along a tributary of the Kitakami River, and that the area covers a wide site holding remains from the end of the early Jomon through to its late phase.

The Name Carries the Place of Excavation, the Reading Only the First Word

The latter half of the name has no reading attached.

The name reads: clay figurine, then a slash, then the place where it was found.

The reading field gives only the word for clay figurine. The place of excavation receives no reading at all.

At the former Konishi residence, the word for former was left out of the reading. That is a single word.

Here more than half the name goes without a reading.

Other figurines are named the same way, with a slash and a place in Aomori, Yamagata or Nagano. The practice of appending the find-spot after a slash is shared across this kind of material.

Found Set within a Stone Enclosure

How it lay when found is recorded.

The Agency records that the figurine came from one corner of the site, set within a stone enclosure.

It had been placed inside a ring of stones. Not left where it happened to fall, but put there on purpose.

With the cherry-laced armour, a retainer buried it beneath a great cedar at the fall of his house and Ieyasu had it dug up. That is burial for concealment.

With the engraved mirror at Suijinja, an object turned up during irrigation work and a shrine was built for it afterward.

Here the manner of its placing survived intact. With the gilded mirror the find-spot sat in the notes field; here it sits in the name. How excavation is recorded differs from property to property.

Exaggeration and Abstraction Combined

The assessment names two techniques put together.

The Agency records that techniques of exaggeration and abstraction are skilfully combined, bringing the figurine to a well-ordered form.

Exaggeration and abstraction stand side by side. Both move away from rendering things as they are, and the record says their combination produced an ordered whole.

At Kobe College, exteriors were unified while each building was given individuality: two opposing directions held together. With the gilt bronze implements, the record turned twice on a concession.

Here there is no concession. Two techniques are simply named and combined.

Of the ornament, the record says the decorative pattern carried over the whole body expresses well the character of the late Jomon in the northeast.

Seeing It

The figurine is at 13-9 Ueno Park, Taito-ku, Tokyo, owned by the National Institutes for Cultural Heritage.

Found in Miyagi, held in Tokyo. The gilded mirror likewise moved from Gifu to Tokyo. Archaeological material is often kept far from where it was found.

The town named in the title no longer exists as such, having become part of a larger city through amalgamation. As with the village named for the gilded mirror, the name stands as it was at the time of listing.

The fields for dimensions and for form carry nothing. The date field is empty too, and only the period field has an entry, reading Jomon.

The commentary, however, covers the circumstances of the find, the techniques and the ornament, and runs longer than the single sentence given to the gilded mirror. It is a museum holding, not kept on permanent display. Check before travelling.