Term · Japanese culture
Daruma
A legless red doll with two blank white circles where its eyes should be, waiting for you to earn them.
In Otakana the clue reads: Round red doll with blank eyes
- Type
- Term
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- Japanese culture
- Letters
- 6 · Hard
You buy a daruma with a goal in mind, paint in one eye to begin, and leave the other blank until the goal arrives. Politicians do this on election night in front of cameras. Students do it before entrance exams. The doll then sits somewhere visible for a year, looking at you with one eye, and that is the entire mechanism.
The shape copies Bodhidharma, the monk who carried Zen from India to China and who, in the legend, sat facing a wall for nine years until his arms and legs wasted away. The doll is weighted at the base, so knocking it over only makes it sit back up. The proverb attached to it counts seven falls and eight recoveries.
Decoration follows a house style: red for luck and for warding off illness, eyebrows drawn as a crane and whiskers as a tortoise, both animals that stand for long life. Takasaki in Gunma makes most of the country's supply, and its temple market sells fresh dolls each January while the previous year's batch goes on a bonfire, eyes filled in or not.
Spelling DARUMA
DARUMA alternates consonant and vowel the whole way, six letters with no cluster to trip on, and the vowels run A, U, A. It is the Japanese reading of the monk's name worn down to its middle: dharma became daruma. Nothing is silent and nothing doubles, so the only real risk is putting an O where the U belongs.