Toys are universally beloved as tools for children to play with while nurturing their intellectual and emotional development.
However, it was only in the early 20th century, towards the end of the Meiji era (1868–1912), that the modern concept of toys took root in Japan, along with a unified term omocha to describe them. Up to that point, the words used to refer to toys varied by region and class: for example, the common people of Edo (now Tokyo) called them te-asobi while those in Kyoto and Osaka would say mochasobi or te-mamori. These words reveal connotations of something to be held in the hand while playing, as well as something that protects its owner.
In the Edo period (1603–1868), playthings were made in a cottage industry style, using familiar natural materials such as bamboo, wood, clay, and washi paper, and many included simple devices to produce fun movements or sounds. They were linked to their regional climate, culture, folk beliefs and legends, and some developed in the context of Shintō or Buddhist festivals. Many of these were also used as amulets to ward off evil and bring good fortune to those who played with them or kept them close by.
A gallery of 1 item.
Belief in the supernatural exhibited in early modern te-asobi and te-mamori
In the Edo period, people believed that it was not viruses and pathogens that caused illness, but the work of a variety of pestilential spirits (ekibyō-gami); even smallpox was thought to be due to possession through a ‘pox spirit’. Smallpox occurred in recurring epidemics throughout the early modern period, and red hariko (papier-mâché dolls) depicting daruma, tai-guruma (sea bream riding on carts), horned owls, oxen, horses and the like were made in many regions and given to sick children. A range of symbolic wishes were invested in the dolls: for example, the pox spirit was said to have a preference for the colour red, so red was used to court his favour and to ask for the illness to be a light one. In another example, as red symbolizes life, it was hoped that its special power would disperse the demons of sickness. Similarly, daruma dolls (which always return to an upright position) represented springing up again from the sickbed; and the protection of horned owls was sought in the belief that despite a continuing high fever, the patient might be able to avoid going blind.
A gallery of 2 items.
Once the folk beliefs of the past began to be displaced by an evidence-led approach to health matters and toys made of artificial materials began to be mass-produced in factories and distributed throughout Japan, the mystical te-asobi and te-mamori of the past inevitably left the stage. However, any time they have seemed to be at risk of disappearing completely, fans including cultural figures and collectors have emerged and continued to keep them alive under the name of ‘traditional local toys’.
Origins and global spread of spinning tops
Toys can be classified into two main types. The first comprises imitations of natural or formed objects, such as animals, vehicles and toys for playing house, while the second includes items created as toys in their own right, such as tops and balls. Spinning tops typify toys of the latter category, and have continued to be popular across time and across borders.
Look around the world today and you will find a wide range of tops made of different materials, shaped in different ways, and spun differently. So when did such rotating toys first appear? Several tops found in Egypt are estimated to date back to the 20th to 14th centuries BCE, meaning that tops were already in existence three to four thousand years ago. They are carved wooden cones, and it is believed they were spun by hitting them with a whip-like stick, with a cord attached to the end.
There are however alternative theories too: that the origins of spinning tops can be traced to tree nuts. It is possible that our distant ancestors were inspired by the mysterious motion of round nuts falling from the trees and whirling around, and this led to the creation of the top.
A gallery of 2 items.
Why do people love spinning tops?
When the NHK Design Museum Japan project on the origins of design brought filmmaker Tsujikawa Kōichirō to JAPAN TOY MUSEUM, he was moved by the strong life force of the top, which has won friends all over the world as it spread out across millennia, and he turned his keen gaze to its roots.
Why do people love tops? Tsujikawa spoke about the essence of tops, while picking up one example after another of the 1000 or so pieces from the museum’s collection:
People have been fascinated by rotation since ancient times, and the trance-like sense of euphoria it conjures up. The design of a top reflects this primordial desire for ‘rotation’ that is common to all mankind.
He later made a video which recalls the childhood sensation of being absorbed in spinning a top with one’s hands, at the same time as expressing symbolically the grand story of rotating toys, starting out from a simple handmade top built from a nut pierced by a shaft.
A gallery of 1 item.
Japan, a treasure trove of tops
Turning to Japanese tops, in archaeological terms, the oldest are wooden cones found at sites dating from the late 6th and early 7th centuries. Their shape closely resembles that of the whipping tops that 20th-century children got so passionate about well over a thousand years later. They are also very similar to the ancient Egyptian designs.
In literature, tops make their first appearance in the early 10th century. They were called koma-tsukuri, and as the description mentions holes, the assumption is that they were narigoma, i.e. whistling tops. Some believe that the tones emitted by the koma-tsukuri while spinning may also have been used for fortune-telling.
Later on in the Edo period, in around the 18th century, a commodity economy developed and common people acquired manufacturing and selling power, resulting in a greater variety of tops becoming available. In larger urban areas one began to see tops wrapped with strings, tops to be turned by twisting with the fingers, tops made from shells, and tops made from layers of perforated coins, and the sight of an endlessly turning top came to be associated with wishes for good health and good fortune, making top spinning an established New Year’s pastime.
In the 19th century, tops reflecting local culture emerged in provincial towns and rural areas too. Be it Tōhoku’s zuguri-goma, rotating on hardened snow, Kantō’s edo-goma, incorporating intricate mechanisms, Kinki’s nage-goma, flat cones pierced by iron cores, Kitakyūshū’s kenka-goma, where players use their spin momentum to battle for supremacy, or Southern Kyūshū’s chongake-goma, which fly through the air, all have a distinctly local flavour.
A gallery of 6 items.
Europeans who visited Japan at the end of the early modern period, in the late 19th century, marvelled at the variety of Japanese tops and the way people of all ages enjoyed spinning them. Sir Rutherford Alcock (1809–1897), an Englishman who served as the first Consul-General and Minister Plenipotentiary to Japan, wrote the following in The Capital of the Tycoon, an account of his impressions of Japan:
It has been suggested we might be called a nation of cricketers and fox-hunters […] The same hasty generalization would make the Japanese a nation of top-spinners.
In Tsujikawa Kōichirō’s display The world of whipping tops and other spinning wonders (featured in Design Discoveries: Towards a DESIGN MUSEUM JAPAN), 126 tops from Japan and other parts of the world are packed into a hemispherical display case alongside his video, vividly demonstrating the universal, ethnic and regional aspects of tops, beyond any boundaries of time and space.
Images courtesy of JAPAN TOY MUSEUM.
Osaki Ayame / Curator, JAPAN TOY MUSEUM
Osaki became curator at the JAPAN TOY MUSEUM in 1990, following a career working for Japan Overseas Educational Services. For over 30 years since, she has been in charge of building networks to support the museum’s activities in researching and collecting folk art toys from all over the world. Osaki is involved in organising exhibitions and courses both inside and outside the museum, including Christmas throughout the World and the annual hina-ningyō shows. In total she has been responsible for over 300 such events. Publications include Mamagoto (Playing House) published by Bunkeidō, 2014, Nihon to Sekai Omoshiro Gangu Zukan (Japan and the Outside World: An Illustrated Book of Amusing Toys) co-author, published by Kōbe Newspaper Publishing Centre, 2017, Sekai no Mingei Gangu – Nihon Gangu Hakubutsukan Korekushon (Folk Toys of the World – the Japanese Toy Museum Collection) published by Daifuku Shorin, 2020, and Chūgoku Minshū Gangu – Nihon Gangu Hakubutsukan Korekushon (Chinese Folk Toys – the Japanese Toy Museum Collection) published by Daifuku Shorin, 2022. She is on the board of The Japan International Doll and Toy Research Association.