Daruma Dolls: Which Eye First?

It’s only after you've already bought a daruma doll and are gazing at its curious countenance while cradling it in one palm that you're likely to consider this question.

'Which daruma doll eye should I color first?' Daruma are sold without eyes being painted on them, and the pupils are filled in by the owner. The first pupil is drawn when you decide on the goal you want to enlist the doll's help in attaining, and the other gets filled in at some point during the next 12 months when you've reached it.

Many sources say that you should color the left eye first. And by this, by the way, they mean the doll's left eye, not the eye that is on your left as you face him. Knowing this important detail will certainly clarify things if you saw such advice online and were wondering whose left it was referring to!

But now that I’ve cleared that up, I’m going to say something that makes it moot. Because in fact, it doesn’t matter which eye you color when you make your wish or goal.

Even though I’ve lived in Japan since 1997 and have colored my share of daruma doll eyes, I wasn’t really sure which pupil should be filled in first until I started writing this article, as I assumed there was a right and a wrong way to do this and I'd forgotten which eye I'd chosen in the not so recent past!

For the answer, I went straight to the horse’s mouth. In this case, since my daruma doll itself was mum on the subject, that means I checked with an organization of daruma doll makers called Gunma Daruma Doll Manufacturers’ Cooperative Union. Gunma is a prefecture that includes Takasaki City, where about 80% of Japan’s daruma dolls are made. On their website the association notes the prevailing advice about the left eye, but goes on to refute it by saying that ‘there is no correct order of painting eyes on a daruma doll.’

So why is it mentioned in so many places that a certain eye should be colored first? When it comes to getting assistance of the kind that the daruma doll is said to offer, there are certain prescribed steps that must be taken, to be sure. But it seems to me that there’s also a natural tendency to think that the more steps that are involved and the more specific they are, the better the chance of a positive outcome! And then there’s the cultural predilection for process in Japan. The way something is done often seems to rival the result itself in importance.


So there you have it. Gunma Prefecture itself also has a website by the way, which is a more general resource that covers a plethora of topics related to goings on all over the prefecture, with a mention included about the daruma doll makers in Takasaki City. Interestingly, the writers of this Gunma Prefecture site, despite their proximity to the center of Japan's daruma doll production, seem to have accepted conventional wisdom because they mention that when a wish or goal decided on, the left eye is colored in!

But that just goes to show how hard it can be to pin down information these days when we have so many resources to choose from on the web! I’m still going with the makers’ association’s site. It seems to me that if those folks don’t know what they’re talking about, I think we really are out of luck!

source http://kyotocollection.com/blog/-daruma-dolls-which-eye-first/