カテゴリー: Essay (English)

日本語

A famous designer was talking of his childhood memories on TV.  He has two sisters and played together with dolls.  He enjoyed making the doll’s dresses as well.  It led him to the present job as a designer.

I also played with dolls and made the dresses as he did.

A popular US TV show was ,,,.  About ten challengers competed with each other for the prize and honor.  Two-three challengers were eliminated in each trial.  The last one was an winner.  Every week a competition for various professionals was broadcasted.

One of them was a competition with dress designers.  They first drew the dress’s design and went shopping fabrics.  They draped the fabrics on body, and fixed them on the body and made gathers and frills with pins, and cut them.  Then they temporally sawed.

I remember I made simple clothes in home economics school-class.  I have leaned dressmaking in a summer vacation when I was a student.  I used patterns and cut fabric spread out on the table.  I can not draw patters by my self or understand the curve of neck and shoulder, but I thought the method was a routine way.

However, the professional designers did not use patterns at all, but their methods were quite same as my methods making doll’s dresses.  I think I had made many (doll’s) dresses  since my childhood, with methods as professional designers do.  I think I had a possible choice as a dress designer.

I already had a job during very long time  The job was quite different from dress-design.  I do not hope to become a dress designer from now.  I do not regret my life, because I would have another job even though I could start my life again.

I think making dolls may be training the skill for dress designer.  I would like to suggest people making dolls have a choice as dress designer.

 

/日本語

My aunt made our clothes and gave me back the rest of fabric.  Sometimes it looked enough to make a suit of clothes for us.  So, I first started to make large size of dolls and used it as much as I like.For example, I made a black coat ① and  a skirt ② as shown in above photo (see black fabric).  Second, I made black trousers ③ for middle size of dolls.  I suppose most of people can throw away the rest of fabric at this point, but my character refused.  Next, I sewed the pieces of fabrics together with other ones to make enough size of fabric.   Then I made a coat ④ for small size of doll.  At last, I used the small pieces for mini size of dolls.  See the black shoes ⑤.  I was satisfied to use most of the black fabric.

Thus, if we make dolls from large size to small size, we can efficiently use a fabric as much as we can.    This may be from a Japanese sprit word, “mottainai”.

/日本語

I showed my dolls to a guy.  He pointed out that my dolls have no mouth.

Yes, I know this, but I was not aware of the strangness.  I realized I have never put mouth on their face since the first doll I made.  So far, I have not considered why I did not make mouth.  I would like to dare to think the reason.

When we put mouth on their face as the last work, we stitch it by red thread or draw it by red ink pen .  The drawn mouth determines a fixed facial expression.  If we failed to draw mouth, it could damage the doll’s impression.   I think the failure is fatal to make dolls, even though we spent much energy and time.

I think my dolls without mouths may have various facial expressions dependent on our emotion.  They may react dependent on our emotion.

This is the reason why I did not make mouth in my dolls.

/日本語

One day, a teenager said to me, he is scared of my doll.  It sat down alone, on a table in a lonely room where we did not use so much.  I love my dolls and I am healed and relaxed to see them.  I was shocked at and not able to understand what he said.

Actually, I also feel such feeling when I looked at dolls apparently close to human, particularly to the face.  We feel soul in the dolls.  If the maker or owner passed away accidentally or unfortunately, the feeling becomes more awful.  However, I thought my dolls never have such feeling against any guys.  I realized this is just my guess.

For dolls, the happiest life is that we love them under our care long time.  Nevertheless the dolls are getting dirty dependent on time.  Some day they are thrown away as dirty trash.  I understand this scenario.

If I passed away unfortunately, or even by my normal quiet death, my dolls would be immediately thrown away as the nasty stuff.  If my dolls were presented to someone and unfortunate events happened at the new home, the dolls would be thrown away.  I want to give my dolls happy future.  I know many people have a hobby of handmade dolls.  I would like to ask how they think of this point.