Kawabata Shopping Arcade
Covered arcade of lantern shops and clay-doll workshops descended from a four-century-old castle-clay craft.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Kawabata Shopping Arcade in Fukuoka traces the origin of Hakata ningyo dolls back to around 1600, when a tile maker named Soshichi Masaki, working on the new Fukuoka Castle, shaped a scrap of leftover clay into a small unglazed figure for his lord. It follows the craft as it passed between generations of Hakata potters over two centuries, gaining its name at a national exhibition in 1890 before traveling to the Paris Exposition. Look into the shop windows along this four-hundred-meter covered street as you walk it, where the same techniques are still practiced by hand.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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