Paper short abstract:

For the past five years, a new population of Japanese collectors has begun to explore the world of traditional kokeshi. This presentation will be a preliminary exploration and comparison of previous and new kokeshi collecting trends, and their influence on this nationally recognized folk art doll.

Paper long abstract:

For the past five years, a new population of Japanese collectors has begun to explore the world of traditional kokeshi. This seemingly sudden interest in kokeshi has been characterized by the Japanese media as a "kokeshi boom" fueled by young women. The defining of this collecting boom as female-driven has created and facilitated the negative perception among long-term collectors, primarily men in their late 60s to early 80s, that these new collectors are only interested in purchasing "kawaii" (cute) and small kokeshi for an assemblage that reveals little meaning or understanding of kokeshi culture and tradition. This presentation will be a preliminary exploration and comparison of these generational and gender-based kokeshi collecting trends, and their influence on this nationally recognized and culturally specific folk art doll. Artisans, who are charged with carrying on the tradition of making a particular design of kokeshi, must also find balance between long-term collectors' narrow definition of what kokeshi are and new collectors' aesthetic tastes. The real question then is not necessarily about the negative perceptions of new collectors, but what is considered a collection and how the process of collecting is accomplished. Borrowing from Thomas Tanselle's (1999) discussion of collecting, there is a social benefit to collecting that must be acknowledged here and, despite differences in opinion, the positive economic and social impacts of both of these collecting techniques cannot be denied. Contrary to negative associations, these two seemingly divergent collecting styles are mutually beneficial.