Toshiden: Exploring Japanese Urban Legends: Volume One by Tara A. Devlin

Author:Tara A. Devlin [Devlin, Tara A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orochi Press
Published: 2018-07-19T20:00:00+00:00

While the story presented in Young Lady was much closer to the legend in its present form thanks to these changes, it wasn’t until two years later in the August 15, 1970 edition of the Hokkaido Shinbun that the current version of the story was printed for the first time. It was here that the Mannenji Temple acknowledged that they were in possession of the doll and revealed it to the public for the first time.

HOW DOES THE HAIR GROW?

The Okiku doll is real. You can visit it in Mannenji Temple right now, and its hair really does grow. But how? Several explanations have been given over the years, ranging from the glue used to keep it in place feeding it nutrients, to even more supernatural reasons that can never be proven or disproven. The real reason, however, is likely much simpler. It’s the way Japanese dolls are built.

The hair inside the doll’s head is threaded in a U-shape. Say, for example, you wanted to make a doll with hair that was 10 cm long. The doll-makers would take a length of hair over twice that length, around 25 cm, and wind it into a loop around the centre. They then insert that loop into the empty space in the dolls head, affix it with glue to stabilise it and voila. A single piece of hair has been threaded. So while the hair only appears 10 cm long from the outside, each strand is actually double that length, with the rest hidden inside the doll’s head.

As the glue weakens over the years, the strands of hair slowly come apart and appear to grow. Of course, they can only grow to the roughly 25 cm in length that’s inside the doll’s head before it falls out entirely. The priests of Mannenji Temple have never allowed anyone to examine the doll, so it’s impossible to say for certain what is happening with Okiku, but knowing how Japanese dolls are made, this seems to be the most likely explanation.

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