Japanese folk art

thumb|Maneki-neko with motorized arm beckons customers to buy lottery tickets in Tokyo, Japan

traditional Japanese doll modeled after Bodhidharma, the founder of the Zen sect of Buddhism

thumb|right|Rakugoka at Sanma Festival

thumb|Kokeshi thumb|Finishing a kokeshi thumb|Modern kokeshi are simple wooden Japanese dolls with no arms or legs that have been crafted for more than 150 years as a toy for children. Originally from the Tohoku region in northern Honshu, kokeshi are handmade from wood, having a simple trunk and head with a few thin, painted lines to define the face. The body often has floral and/or ring designs painted in red, black, and sometimes green, purple, blue, or yellow inks, and covered with a layer of wax. Since the 1950s, kokeshi makers have signed their work, usually on the bottom and sometimes o

thumb|A mikoshi of Hiyoshi-taisha thumb|Mikoshi fighting on Nada-no-Kenka Matsuri at Himeji thumb|This mikoshi enshrines Tokugawa Ieyasu at the [[Tōshō-gū in Nikkō.]] A is a sacred religious palanquin (also translated as portable Shinto shrine). Shinto followers believe that it serves as the vehicle to transport a deity in Japan while moving between main shrine and temporary shrine during a festival or when moving to a new shrine. Often, the mikoshi resembles a miniature building, with pillars, walls, a roof, a veranda and a railing.

thumb|upright=1.3| at Chizu, Tottori with a patterned windsock at the top

Japanese art form

thumb|300px|A dancing drummer wearing a Namahage costume, performed Namahage-Daiko in Akita Station. The are demonlike beings portrayed by men wearing hefty oni (ogre) masks and traditional straw capes (mino) during a New Year's ritual, in local northern Japanese folklore of the Oga Peninsula area of Akita Prefecture.

thumb|right|Tomori shisa is a traditional Ryukyuan cultural artifact and decoration derived from Chinese guardian lions, often seen in similar pairs, resembling a cross between a lion and a dog, from Okinawan mythology. Shisa are wards, believed to protect from some evils. People place pairs of shisa on their rooftops or flanking the gates to their houses, with the left shisa traditionally having a closed mouth, the right one an open mouth. The open mouth shisa traditionally wards off evil spirits, and the closed mouth shisa keeps good spirits in.

Traditional Japanese hand ball

thumb|An Akabeko toy

thumb| braid

Type of umbrella originating in China

Japanese summer festival

thumb|Detail of a mid-19th-century kimono decorated using , with white [[cotton threads on an indigo-dyed plain weave background (Metropolitan Museum of Art)]] thumb|upright=2|Child's sleeping mat (), late 1800s. The stitches are decorative, but also functional; they hold the pieced cotton rags together

thumb|Thrown, combed tea bowl by Shōji Hamada The concept of , variously translated into English as "folk craft", "folk art" or "popular art", was developed from the mid-1920s in Japan by a philosopher and aesthete, Yanagi Sōetsu (1889–1961), together with a group of craftsmen, including the potters Hamada Shōji (1894–1978) and Kawai Kanjirō (1890–1966). As such, it was a conscious attempt to distinguish ordinary crafts and functional utensils (pottery, lacquerware, textiles, and so on) from "higher" forms of art – at the time much admired by people during a period when Japan was going through

thumb|A 19th century carved nut, depicting the mask of Hyottoko

thumb|Assorted hagoita Hagoita (羽子板 ｢はごいた｣) are the wooden paddles used to hit shuttlecocks (羽子 pronounced hago ｢はご｣ or hane ｢はね｣), traditionally made of soapberry seeds and bird feathers, that are used to play the traditional Japanese pastime called hanetsuki during the New Year. The paddles are decorated with various images, sometimes executed in relief, of women in kimono, kabuki actors, and so on. Japanese people think playing hanetsuki is a way to drive away evil spirits because the movement of the hagoita is similar to the harau action (a Japanese expression meaning "to drive away"). Thu

pottery and stoneware made in Shigaraki area, Japan

thumb|An example of a Fukusuke doll are traditional dolls associated with good luck in Japan. A Fukusuke doll is the depiction of a man kneeling seiza style, with a large head and a topknot.

thumb|upright=1.25|A Japanese family collaborating in producing Ōtsu-e Ōtsu-e (, "pictures from Ōtsu") was a folk art that began in 17th century Japan and depended on the busy road traffic of the trade route through the district where it was produced in Ōtsu, near Kyoto. With the coming of railways, especially of the Tōkaidō line in the late 19th century, it largely disappeared.

thumb|right|Miharu-koma (alt. Miharu-goma) are angular, brightly coloured, wooden toy horses produced as folk art in Miharu, Fukushima, Japan.