The Ancient Power Of Dogu

November 2, 2009 in Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo, Funny, Japan
Tags: Yasunari Kawabata, Doraemon, Dogu, Dogu statues, Jomon, Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo, Yoshio Sawai, Dogu Revival, Shinji Nishikawa

Finishing Move “Docking” ~Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo E02

Dogu Statues

The dogu are humanoid forms shaped in clay, large and small, richly decorated or homely and unadorned. Some 18,000 of them have been unearthed to date, in Jomon-period settlements stretching from Kyushu, north through Tohoku to Hokkaido. The oldest are nearly 10,000 years old, the youngest a mere 2,300.

Dogu Revival

Another Jomon enthusiast was Nobel prize-winning author Yasunari Kawabata, who had a dogu on his desk. It is a lugubrious figure with a heart-shaped face, and Kawabata described in an essay how “it is sitting here in front of my writing paper and speaking to me.”

Dogu still speak — albeit through rather different media today. They feature in the “Understanding Japanese History” comic-book series narrated by cult robocat Doraemon, whose human sidekick Nobita remarks that they “look like aliens.” In the PlayStation game “Dokioki,” the dogu are indeed aliens. Shinji Nishikawa’s “Dogu Famir,” a seven-volume comic series, features a family of figurines trying to fit into everyday life — shopping, attending school and protecting the usual assortment of scantily-clad manga heroines from an evil, UFO-controlled dogu

The dogu have something to tell us, Japan Times, Oct. 2, 2009