The power of dogu
The British Museum, until 22 November 2009. Admission free
Dogū are small ceramic figures made during the Jōmon period of ancient Japan (~14,000–400 BC), whose precise purpose and significance are largely unknown, and whose design while following several definable trends, also exhibit incredible diversity.
I have to say I knew nothing about Dogū before chacing on this exhibition after some afternoon tea in the museum on a day off the other week, but I’m incredibly glad I did. So glad I went back and saw it again, in fact. And I may return once more before the exhibition closes in November.
The photos on the website and in the exhibition catalogue really do very little to impart the strange, silent, brooding nature of these remarkable objects: without eerie light and shadows playing off the patterned surfaces and unnaturally proportioned features, you just can’t get a feel for the magical nature of these prehistoric lumps of clay. Most objects in the exhibition date from 2,500–1,000 BC, and they’re genuinely some of the strangest things I’ve ever seen. From triangular-masked figures with legs like tree stumps, to delicate cat-faced figures with spindly arms and three-fingered hands: what motivated the people of ancient Japan to construct them remains a steadfast mystery (to me at least).
The most remarkable figure is perhaps the ‘Goggle-eyed’ dogū, designated an ‘important cultural property’ by the Japanese government and appearing everywhere in Japanese culture from school textbooks, to Manga, to adorning the top of dogū souvenir huts. What I found most fascinating about the ‘goggle-eyed’ figure however, was a story involving the ‘father of Japanese anthropology’, Tsuboi Shogoro.
On travelling to London in the late 19th Century, Shogoro visits the British Museum and finds on display a pair of Siberian snow-goggles that look almost identical to the two and a half thousand year-old dogū’s eyewear. Could there be some link? Were the Siberian goggles Japanese inventions? Had the ancient Japanese chanced upon a Siberian traveller? There’s no evidence of either scenario, but it’s the kind of serendipity that I find incredibly alluring.
With the exhibition being on until the 22 November – and with it being free – there’s absolutely no excuse for any Londoner to miss it, and it’s a damn good excuse for a visit to London if you’re not based here.
