Dollmaking as a testament of Faith

By Char Kihara | December 17, 2020

Myokonin means one who lives their life dedicated to Amida Nyorai. Myokonin are not monks or scholars but are lay followers. The Myokonin has a great understanding of Amida and demonstrates Amida’s compassion by unselfishly giving of themselves to better society.

Hisako Nakamura

A modern Myokonin is Hisako Nakamura (1897-1968) Takayama Higashi Hongwanji, who was an advocate for the disabled and a poet. She lectured all over Japan for women’s groups and groups for the disabled. The Japanese Minister of Health awarded her a medal.

Hisako Nakamura inspired people, that whoever and whatever circumstance you live in, you can overcome any obstacle and rise to greatness. She told people her inspiring story and was always grateful for her life.

Hisako was the daughter of a tatami maker. Her family was destitute. When she was three years old, she suffered from frostbite. Her limbs had to be amputated after her appendages became infected due to gangrene. Her father died a few years later, and her mother remarried.

To live, Hisako taught herself to eat with chopsticks by wrapping gauze around her arm stumps. She taught herself to sew with needle and thread, holding the needle in her mouth. She was able to sew her own underwear and kimonos. Sewing gave Hisako a creative outlet, and she taught herself to make dolls. By measuring the cloth for her doll and cutting fabric for the doll’s clothes: all while using her mouth, threading the needle, and holding the needle for sewing, Hisako made her dolls.

Her mother was strict with Hisako (kibishi), so that Hisako grew up to be resilient and brave. Throughout her life, she was the victim of (ijime) teasing and bullying. Her siblings would laugh at Hisako when she was eating, saying that she was like a cat, using her mouth to eat. Her mother treated her the same as the other children in the household, making her do chores like sweeping and cleaning her room, lighting the fire for cooking, washing clothes, and washing the dishes. Hisako repeatedly tried until she could finally learn how to do the household chores as if she was an able-bodied person.

At that time, no school would allow a person without limbs to attend school, so Hisako taught herself to read and write by reading her brother and sister’s textbooks. She would use her mouth to hold the brush to write the characters. The other children in her village would always be staring at her and teasing her.

When she was nine years old, her mother carried Hisako on her back to the river and was going to kill them both. Hisako cried and cried, begging her mother that she wanted to live. Her mother, hearing Hisako’s cry, could not kill Hisako or herself.

When Hisako was 20, her family sold her to a circus hoping that Hisako could make a living in the freak show. She was a circus performer for about 20 years. The circus displayed Hisako with her dolls and calligraphy as a living exhibit. She was always on display, and it was as if she was in a reality show. The circus called her “Daruma Musume” (Daruma girl) after the Daruma figure of childhood stories that are part of Japanese folklore. What was the name for a cute, beloved icon, became for Hisako instead an epithet of pain, being trapped in a body that had no limbs, and the helplessness of her situation. However, Hisako endured this life in the circus and even traveled with the circus to China.

Hisako Nakamura’s book, Give Me the Power to Live

Hisako married twice and had two daughters. In 1937, Hideo Takahashi, who was the head of “Japanese Lighthouse” an advocacy group for the disabled in Japan, invited her to meet Helen Keller, the world-renowned advocate and author, who was coming to Japan to lecture. Helen Keller, upon meeting, told Hisako, “You are a miracle of this world. You are greatly superior to me.” Helen Keller embraced Hisako, who stood before her on artificial legs and accepted the doll that Hisako had lovingly sewn.

Hisako Nakamura was grateful to the words of Helen Keller and felt for the first time in her life that someone had acknowledged her life. She wrote, “it was grace that brought her (me) to today, the grace of her (my) parents, society and all people. There had been the person who sold her (me) to show to the people, but if that man had not been around, I could not have lived till today. So if I look at it all today, in every direction, I am thankful.”

“I live embraced in the sleeves of the Buddha.”