Whether creative or not?

"Traditional" versus "Creative"

When I dropped at an antique shop with my dead father-in-low, I picked up a kokeshi and said to him, "wow,how pretty! don't you agree?"


He checked it for a while and said to me, "it's not so good.Because it is a...Sousaku Kokeshi".



"What' s the sousaku kokeshi" I said.

"hmm..." He fumbled with his words.

"I mean what' s the differences between 'sousaku' and others."

"hmm..."

"Well, aren't your kokeshi sousaku kokeshi? "

"No. Absolutely not!" he denied with some impatient tone.

"Okay, what are your kokeshi called?"

"Those are called 'traditional kokeshi'"he replied.




I didn't inquire about it any more. It was obvious that he was so annoyed with my question -I was a complete beginner of kokeshi at that time(and maybe still just a beginner). But at the same time I realized that his irritation was not only because of my lack of knowledge, but also of his own inarticulacy.

Origin of Creative Kokeshi

You can easily find many kinds of something "sousaku"(or "sosaku") if you google the word. The word is generally translated as "creative" in English. So, you can also find the word like "creative kokeshi".



"A creative person has the ability to invent and develop original ideas, especially in the arts."(quoted from "Collins COBUILD English Dictionary").



That's almost right. "sosaku ryori" is an attempt to break traditional Japanese cuisine and "sosaku rakugo" is also an attempt to break traditional rakugo, a Japanese traditional verbal entertainment. But as for kokeshi, it was somewhat different from these artistic or cultural challenges.



Kokeshi, originally made only in Tohoku, north-east region in Japan, has been made in many parts of Japan since WWⅡ.



So many men, so many minds, and so many kokeshi. These kokeshi was different from original kokeshi in many aspects -some with colourful, some with gorgeous dress, and some with blond -I hear some kokeshi even had limb. Moreover, here many factory-made kokeshi came in. Kokeshi had originally been made by Kijishi' s own hand all alone.



In fact, this movement had been promoted not on artistic or art craft basis but on commercial basis -as 'easy to develop souvenir'. This was a danger to those who had loved and preserved classical kokeshi. So they distinguished these classical kokeshi from others and called the former as traditional-kokeshi and the latter as creative-kokeshi. Some people even call the latter as 'new-type-kokeshi' instead of the word 'creative kokeshi' because they think "those kind of kokeshi are not absolutely creative!!".

Coexistence

Today, this doesn't really matter -yes, so many men, so many minds, and so many kokeshi. I know some of creative kokeshi are quite hand made and so attractive.
Rather the matter is whether we can keep 'so many kokeshi' -kokeshi artisans has been decreasing years as other traditional artisans has been decreasing. It is because I really want many people as possible understand and enjoy kokeshi that I write about them with bad English.