午夜剧场

In the video for the 2010 Vocaloid song "Matryoshka" by Hachi (Kenshi Yonezu), there is a scene where a yellow background is suddenly covered in a massive amount of text—phrases like "Matryoshka dolls are..." and "In Japan, there are also nesting dolls like Daruma made with the same construction as Matryoshka..."—which fills the screen in black at high speed before vanishing. This was the Japanese origin theory of Matryoshka taken from Wikipedia, and as I was just beginning to investigate this mystery at the time, I was personally impressed, thinking, "Hachi is laughing at the sheer volume and fragility of this folklore!"

Thirteen years have passed since then. Every time I went to Russia for academic conferences or folklore surveys, I traveled all over. Sergiyev Posad, home to the Toy Museum; the village of Abramtsevo, established by the 19th-century financier Mamontov and various artists; the Vasily Polenov Estate Museum in Tula Oblast... For someone like me, who could not stay in Russia long-term for various reasons other than a one-year study abroad in Moscow during my undergraduate years, these accumulated small trips were very precious, and I made use of every spare minute.

However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic followed by the invasion of Ukraine, Russia is now further away than the ends of the earth. I thought, "I should compile what I have seen and heard before the materials I collected rot and before I forget, rather than saying there are still mysteries left..." but then I realized there were mountains of mysteries in Japan as well. When were the nesting dolls of the Hakone Seven Lucky Gods—considered the source of the Matryoshka idea—born, and how did they travel to Russia? To begin with, how far back can the history of Japanese woodworking lathes be traced?

This time, I walked through Hakone and Odawara, ordered materials on woodturners, and was moved when I held a "Hyakumanto" from the Nara period in the Juku's Rare Book Room. Perhaps because of the lightheartedness of not being a specialist, studying Japanese woodworking in this way was truly enjoyable, but the manuscript quickly bloated and publication was delayed further and further. That it finally took shape is entirely thanks to the prodding of my highly capable editor.

In the end, there is much that remains unknown about the birth and origins of the Matryoshka. However, when I first started working on this problem, a professor I deeply respect said to me, "If you solve the mystery of the birth of the Matryoshka, I will give you a Nobel Prize." I missed out on the Nobel Prize, but the professor praised me, so I am content to leave it at that.

Yoko Kumanoya

Iwanami Shoten

302 pages, 2,970 yen (tax included)

*Affiliations and titles are those at the time of publication.