Imagine walking through your local mall. You got hungry amidst all of your therapeutic consumer consumption, so you decide it is time to hit the food court to replenish yourself. Rather than just the usual lines and segregated groups of families and friends, you see something much different. Chairs and tables have been moved and shifted, squished together and re-arranged. Some of the people there, who seem to range from high school to middle age, are eating, but they are removed, to the side of this gathering. What is in the center, the point and purpose of this gathering, is a huge group of dolls, ranging in size from seventy centimeters to a mere seven centimeters. As you edge closer, feigning to check out the menu of the nearby Taco Bell, you notice that these are nowhere near to the Barbies you are used to seeing. Instead of painted eyes, their exaggeratedly large eyes glimmer in the light, reminiscent of glass eyes present in porcelain or ceramic dolls. But what they are wearing is nowhere near to the Victorian outfits you are accustomed to those dolls wearing. They wear everything from frilly dresses, to everyday clothes, to things that look like they came from Star Wars or Lord of the Rings movie. If you are curious and brave, you might venture into this large group and politely try and ask about this strange spectacle.
“Excuse me, but what are those dolls?”
“Asian Ball-Jointed Dolls.”
While “what are those dolls” is what the owners of Asian Ball-Jointed Dolls (ABJD) always hear, the real question begging to be asked is “why are they here”? Why at a mall? Why not in a private residence, behind glass, held up by a doll stand, to be casually appreciated? Why are they being posed and photographed like models? Although to understand why these dolls are being brought to a mall and showcased in public is important, perhaps a basic explanation of construction is needed.
While size greatly varies, the majority dolls fall into two categories of sizes, sixty centimeters, and forty-five centimeters. In general, the larger dolls are sculpted to be post pubescent, and the smaller ones are pre-pubescent. They are made by sculpting a master, then creating molds. The final products are reproduced in resin, a material between glass and plastic in behavior. The torso and limbs are jointed to allow for movement and posing. These joints are ball and socket joints, allowing for a wide range of motion, rather than a slotted or other type of joint. These separate parts are strung together with elastic, which allows for pull and slack as the joints bend and always keeps the joints tightly together. Their heads are hollow, and have a “head cap” on the back which allows the owner to access the inside of the head. Once inside the head, the eye sockets are beveled, which allows for glass, acrylic, or silicone eyes to be glued or placed in with putty, which is less permanent. Since the heads are hard resin, they cannot be “rooted” like typical 1/6 vinyl fashion doll heads. Instead, the dolls wear miniature wigs. The faces come out of the mold blank, so a “face-up”, or painting the face, must be done in order to give the doll eyelashes, complexion, lip color, make-up, ect.
All of this combines to be a very customizable, very pose-able doll. It is very possible for two dolls to be made from the same sculpt for the face and to look very different. If this was not enough, various options for bodies, hands, and feet are offered by the companies that produce them, and sometimes these parts are compatible with parts from other companies in size and resin color.
So what created this desire for such a customizable doll? From within those who collect the dolls, there is mention of mitsuore-ningyou being brought to France and Germany from Japan via the Paris Expedition in the early 1800s(“Some”). Joints are generally only present in dolls meant for play, and mitsuore-ningyou are no different. The dolls make use of ball-joints and slotted-joints to allow the doll to stand, kneel, and bow(Yamada 53). These joints are said to have been appropriated by French and German doll makers to make bisque jointed dolls for children to play with(“Some”). 
In the late 1960's Japanese doll artists who had a love for the European ball jointed dolls started designing their own versions of the dolls. By the 1980's, scores of doll artists in Japan were exhibiting, photographing, and publishing books about ball jointed "art-dolls"(“Some”). These photos where often in the style of Bellmer, with the dolls being either dismantled or disfigured. These dolls ranged in size, but could be up to four feet tall, and cost from $5000 to $30,000. Dolls of popular artists now can cost as much as $600,000 dollars(“Some”). One of these artists was Ryoichi Yoshida. It is clear just by looking at these dolls and contemplating the price of them, they are definitively defined as “high art”.
Volks was the first company to commercially reproduce this style of doll. Volks had been already created the “Dollfie” (Doll-figure), a twenty-seven centimeter customizable doll similar to vinyl headed fashion dolls in America, and it had been selling well(“Super Dollfie 10”). Much like the story of Walt Disney seeing a mouse on a train trip that inspired Mortimer Mouse, later known as Mickey Mouse, Volk’s Ball-Jointed Doll has its own creation story.
The story of the creation of the first mass produced BJD, the Super Dollfie, as told by the Volk’s Super Dollfie 10th Anniversary website:
“It was 36 years ago, on December 3rd in 1972, when a hobby shop named “VOLKS” was opened. This tiny little hobby shop suddenly appeared on a street corner in the oldest city of Japan, Kyoto. The young owners of the shop, Mr. and Mrs. Shigeta, spent years running it with small sales and a faraway dream. But there was one person who kept the thought of having female customers someday on her mind.
One day Mrs. Shigeta’s attention was caught by a hand-made doll which Akihiro Enk, a sculptor who had been leading the sculpting group ZOUKEI-MURA, gave as a present to his loving wife.”
The story does not go much into how these dolls gained popularity in Japan, or what inspired the “hand-made doll” other than his wife. However, it is explained that these dolls were created by a hobby company for the purpose of creating a hobby for females. For this purpose, the purchase and outfitting of a doll was made to be complicated, comparable to considerations while putting together a model kit. More will be said on the acquiring of a Super Dollfie later.
The first dolls, Kira, Sara, Nana, and Megu, were first displayed at an event put on by Volks to display their smaller Dollfie in 1999. The four girls had the same head sculpt, but different make up and wigs. One again from the 10th anniversary website, Volks described how their customers who were already used to the somewhat customizable Dollfie reacted to Super Dollfie this first Dollpa (Doll-Party):
“It’s quite understandable that customers showed various reactions when this ball jointed doll came onto the scene.
This doll was far different from what they were accustomed to.
It did not have painted eyes, but mysterious ones that caught the light, showing various expressions.
It was a doll that changed it’s appearance along with the customers.
It was a doll that, for a moment, made you hesitate to touch it.
What kind of influence did Super Dollfie have on the people looking across at them?
What was the impact that kept the customers in front of the display booth?”
For many, it was a bizarre unholy matrimony between the realistic features of the art-dolls and the deformed aesthetics of the Dollfies and the anime and manga their features were appropriated from. For others… perhaps it was the fact that the visual language of kawaii, kawaiiso, and amaeru were so inundated to their minds that the feeling of uncannyness never occurred.
As the popularity of the dolls grew, a store dedicated to the dolls was created. Taking advantage of the urge to make unique dolls with the highly customizable resin figures, Full Custom Service (FCS) was implemented when the new shop opened. With FCS, choices between head sculpts, bodies, hands, feet, eyes, and wigs are able to be made. A description of how the doll’s face is to be painted is recorded, then given to the artists.
As the popularity of Super Dollfie, other companies sprouted up to meet the growing international desire for these beautiful dolls. Each company that sprouted up had its own artists, and thereby their own style of sculpting faces and bodies. For example, the dolls sculpted by Cerberus Project have a much more mature form, and their faces are more realistic when compared to early Volks sculpts at the time. Over time, companies competed with each other in the ease of posability, the range of mobility of joints, and even the height and maturity of sculpts. To compete, Volks has released many limited edition releases of older bodies, and added more mature, less anime influenced faces to their FCS line.
The strange combination of these Super Dollfie to be at once “unique in all the world” with a reported “500 billion” different combinations for FCS and the fact that they were being mass produced unlike their artist-doll predecessors made Super Dollfies both “high” and “low” art at the same time. The fact that they cost around $800 USD for a sixty centimeter doll also makes them pricey enough to be art, but not expensive enough to be considered “high” art. As such, the interactions with them vary wildly.
Although I have personal experience seeing people interact with the dolls, it is much easier to analyze interactions that have been preserved in permanent mediums. The interaction with the dolls is generally divided into three categories. For those who have no exposure to the dolls at all, their first reactions to the dolls can be recorded by articles that reside outside the realm of doll collecting periodicals, and news reports. These sources are designed for places with constraints of size or time, and therefore usually have a quick hook to latch viewers or readers interest. The hook usually comes in emphasizing the uncanny. However, there is also a separate set of media introductions to the dolls for those who are interested in Japanese culture. For interactions with the dolls amongst those who were interested in the dolls directly, or through the context of collecting other dolls, articles from within doll magazines and posts from forums dedicated to ABJD, particularly Den of Angels, were used. While some information was gathered from the watching of news reports, it is important to note that while these reports contain testimonials directly from those who own the dolls, they also have been edited together from a great amount of footage in order to form a consistent picture of the collectors, and does not reflect the ABJD collecting community as a whole. The forums are the most direct form of testimonials from the ABJD community, since they are written, edited, and published by those from the community themselves, and the only limits are the general rules of conduct that the forums give.
In analyzing the visuality of the owners that the news, pictures posted on the Den of Angels forums, and pictures released by Volks of Dollpas, one of the most obvious is that the younger collectors tend to dress like the dolls. As mentioned before, the fashion of the dolls varies greatly. However, important designers for human high fashion in Japan also design for the dolls. Volks sells outfits that have been designed by Baby the Stars Shine Bright and h. NAOTO. It is these styles of dress that the younger participate together with their dolls. In comparison, the older tend to dress more primly as the dolls express themselves. More will be discussed of the dolls as a form of personal expression later. Men tend to have two representations of them within the media. With media that is separate from the dolls or Japanese culture, they are displayed simply as collectors, with satisfaction deriving from the quality or size of their collection. For example, a Japanese news report on Dollpa 15 interviewed a man who obtained nearly 100 Super Dollfies after being interested in them for only a year. This representation also conveys the negative “obsession” that is often placed on the dolls within news reports, and some articles, such as one appearing in the fourth issue of Missbehave, an edgy magazine on the subject of fashion, lifestyle, and girl culture. In sources created for those familiar with the dolls or Japanese culture, men are allowed act toward the dolls like daughters. From an interview from a Male collector shown on Jonathan Ross Japanorama segment about Super Dollfie:
“So what happened was, there sat this girl at the window. At first I had no intention of buying it because it was so expensive, but one day, all of a sudden I thought: She is cute. Okay, just one, just this girl. And so I ended up, I don’t use the word “buy”, I use the word “to bring them home”. So I brought her home and the rest all came, one after the other. So she’s one of the girls that have become a significant part of my memories. In the weekdays while I am at work, I can only play with them in the morning and at night. On a day off, if there is nothing else to do, I play with them all day long.”
A bit later, from the same segment, a different man comments, “ You can’t help loving them, especially if you cannot create your own daughters yourself.”
From these interviews, we see two key elements of satisfaction from the dolls. For many collectors to derive satisfaction from the dolls, they need to personify them. If an ABJD was something that was simply bought, rather than “brought home”, they would create a feeling of satisfaction to these collectors. Also, rather than simply bringing them home, personal interaction with the doll is needed to evoke satisfaction. This takes the form of customizing, taking photos of, dressing, shopping for, or describing or displaying your doll for others. In videos and pictures from Dollpas, owners can be seen embracing and caressing their dolls, which is a direct action of care for the dolls. While the last behavior is commonly seen in the United States in the form of public meetings in malls, libraries, parks, conventions and Dollpas, in Japan it usually occurs at Volks stores, private Karaoke rooms, designated doll friendly tea shops, or private residences. Once again from the Japanorama Super Dollfie segment, a transcript of interactions during an ABJD gathering:
Man A: “Is this real?” (Referring to a tiny Sake bottle.)
Man B: “Yes it is, you can drink it.”
Man A: “She’s a minor. She shouldn’t be drinking.” (Laughter.)
Man B: “How old is Joe?”
Man A: “Sixteen.”
Man B: “He’s a minor then. But he doesn’t look like sixteen at all.”
Slightly later, the men give their own impression of the “dolls are for girls” stereotype for the camera:
“I don’t think just because you are a man, you can’t be interested in dolls. Whether they(the dolls) are male or female, they reflect me. They reflect my ideal image, I think.”
And Volks is fully aware of the ability of these dolls to act as an extention of self expression. Volks describes buying, ordering, or “taking home” a Super Dollfie as “creating another yourself”. Kenji Daisou, Super Dollfie marketer from Volks, commented in the Japanese News Report on Dollpa 15, “I think they(people) enjoy giving form to their secret dreams.” Since the key for the dolls to be stratifying is their emotional pull, many measures are put in place to enable owners to “bond” to their dolls. Their high cost is prohibitive, so finally being able to meet your goal and buy one creates an important memory and increases your bond with the doll. While in the United States and other English speaking doll communities, a pattern of debt and resale of dolls that could not actually be afforded is easily visible by visiting the sale section of the Den of Angels forums, the pattern of savings and debt in Japan is much different(McEachern 137). As such, debt is not usually accrued when purchasing a doll. Once a doll is ordered, particularly from FCS, there is a waiting period of up to four months. The wait is due to demand, and simply the amount of time it takes to paint and assemble a customized doll. Depending on the season, the wait may take more or less than the estimated four months. This time is marked by high anticipation, counting down the days, and worrying if the artists will understand the description given, or if the doll received will not be the in the image of the one expected. This is, in sort, a gestation period that also increases emotional attachment to the doll, particularly if the doll’s “homecoming” is a happy one. The emotional high of a “homecoming” is often so high, that pictures are traditionally taken, as with a birthday party or wedding. An entire section of the Den of Angels forums is dedicated to these picture shows. To add to the feeling of the doll’s “birth”, Volks includes a birth certificate with the owners name, and line for the owner to write in the name of their new FCS doll. If this is not enough, if you are lucky enough to be a resident of Japan, you can pick your doll up at a Volks store and have a “birthing ceremony”. At this ceremony, by blowing out a candle in front of the new doll, you “breathe life into another yourself.”
Since the dolls are personified, it might not be surprising that they tend to achieve a perceived attitude. This can be seen in comments on the Den of Angels forums such as “I just adore him but I wish he would tell me his name.” Also seen is threads with the subject of “Talking about your dolls like they have a say in things.”
When they take a moment to step back and analyze their hobby, as collectors often do in the “General Discussion” subforum of Den of Angels, they are aware that the dolls are beings that are created and exist for their own satisfaction. While collectors of ABJD may profess that their doll prefers certain clothes or poses with a certain attitude in photos, ultimately it is the fact that the owner of the doll gains enjoyment from their doll “behaving” this way out of choices that they, and not the doll, are making. In this way, the dolls can be wish or fantasy fulfillment. They wear high fashion that their owners are unable to. They delve into fantasy realms and have vampire teeth, elf ears, and neko mimi.
They do the things the collectors are unable to, and thereby fulfill their owners, since the dolls are “another yourself”. Yet the owners are aware of this. Because of this, unlike how children outgrow dolls when they realize their love and attention towards the inanimate object goes unrequited, it is very rare for a ABJD owner to stop their collection at just one doll, despite their cost. This can be seen in threads on Den of Angels such as “Successfully Own Only One?” In addition to the satisfaction gained from creating a personal relationship with the doll, when one is bought and customized by an owner it is a unique work of art. Like many other creative endeavors, such as painting, sewing, poetry, writing, cooking, or sculpting, there is something deeply satisfying when a person makes a new creation. Even though the dolls may seem to be girly to some, the act of creating a spectacle to be looked at is a way of exerting power over others. In this way, a “girly” doll becomes a powerful and fulfilling medium of self expression.
Before I finish, I would like to focus on how the English-Speaking media portrays the dolls. All dolls are subject to being considered uncanny. As they are in the form of a human body, yet inanimate, they are like a corpse. The fact that ABJD have realistic eyes, close to what someone would use in taxidermy in quality, if not better, the sense of the uncanny is only heightened. It is highly common to see a doll in the center or a horror story in any culture. In popular culture, ABJD have appeared in horror movies and even in a music video that appropriates this uncomfortable feeling. Because of this universal feeling to dolls, almost all United States news reports use the feeling of the uncanny to keep their viewers’ attention. Their wigs are often ripped off, to reveal their heads, which makes their exaggerated facial proportions look even more bizarre and their foreheads look large. There is often shots made to have the dolls’ heads spinning on their own, much like the scene from The Exorcist. Extreme close-ups and eerie music add to the mood. They are called “alien” and “eerily realistic in a way”(“Asian”). To simplify the explanation of the dolls, they are either simply called ABJD, said to come from Japan with no other explanation of origin, or only concentrate on Super Dollfie. The next point uniformly expressed is surprise at the cost. To the American public, the word “doll” associates with “Barbie” and other dolls meant for children. Dolls are not “high art”, and even if they are collectable, that is only if they are considered antique. A small exception is limited dolls such that Tonner reproduces, or the somewhat customizable vinyl Sybarites. Even so, these dolls are typically only known to doll collecting communities. Because of the price, the owners of the dolls are often depicted as obsessed and addicted, although there are many other hobbies, even within the US, with comparable costs which are treated with more prestige. The final point that programs almost always make is the fact that the dolls are anatomically correct, or as Vive Cool City, a Melbourne Australia internet news site, eloquently described: “These Dolls Have Dicks.” Once again, surprise is expressed at a doll, a child’s toy and therefore representative of the innocence of a child, having any definite reference to genetalia. Once again, the dolls are viewed as toys, and do not have the same expectations of a sculpture in a museum.
The reason that these dolls even need to be explained to the public is because of their rapidly blooming popularity in English-Speaking countries. Many owners on Den of Angels cite their awareness of the dolls coming from either the 2004 TIME article “Anime Girls”, or the Shojo Beat article “The Future Looks Bright for Ball-Jointed Dolls.” While the following in the US was steadily growing at the time of these publications, the articles created a sudden boom of interest in the dolls. Owners in the US did not only start buying the dolls, but also appropriated the way the Japanese interacted with them. People now make trips to Japan for the purpose of purchasing the dolls, and the experience can be called “a culmination of a quest”(Steinberger, 169). With the dolls appearing in popular magazines, news, and even music videos, it will be interesting to see how far ABJD penetrate into popular culture.
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Innumerable HauteDoll and Fashion Doll Quarterly Magazines.
Things I didn't get a chance to talk about:
ReplyDeleteThe influence ABJD have had on other "consumer oriented art", such as Busou Shinki by Konami, Figuma, Revolteck, and others.
More discussion on the aspects of the dead-ness of the doll and comments on how the dolls produced by larger companies generally have more idealized figures. Thin, tall, large breasts, and older males have six-packs to die for.
Talk about Evalyn Wilde, the gothy doll that Tonner released in a similar style to BJD.
The guidelines that determine what is on and off topic at Den of Angels. Sine those forums are the largest English speaking forums for ABJD, being able to expose a doll on DoA can make or break the success of a doll and company.
Volks "elitism". Volks frowns upon dolls from other companies at their events or shops. It is said this is because it is seen as a way of saying "I like theirs better". They are also somewhat considered the "first" ABJD, even though the art dolls came before them.
Also didn't get much into how the features are exaggerated. Or how Volk's Nono, with very distinct exaggerated features, is Japan's top seller.
ReplyDeletehttp://site.volksusa.com/sumikatimes/2009/05/09/standard-model-showcase-nono/