Kawabata Shopping Arcade

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.