Sarubobo

I left out something very interesting about my trip to Takayama a few weeks back. Namely, my new pal, Sarubobo.

Sarubobo dolls are all the rage in the Hida area of Gifu Prefecture, and are very much at home in Takayama; you can buy all manner of souvenirs associated with the little guys.

Essentially, they’re good luck charms, with each colour providing a protection of some description. The etymology of their name is also quite interesting, if you believe Wikipedia -

Sarubobo literally translated from the Japanese as “a baby monkey”. The Japanese word for monkey is “saru”, and another way of saying it is “en”… In Japanese, the English word “leave” translates as “saru”, so possession of a sarubobo means that bad things will “saru”… In Japanese, a happy home is “kanai enman”, a good match is “ryo-en”

The Wikipedia article doesn’t mention all the available colours of sarubobo - my girlfriend, being the cover all bases kinda girl she is - invested in a phone strap that features no less than six sarubobo, all enchanted to protect her (us? how wide ranging is good luck?) from some unmitigated disaster or other.

From top to bottom:

RED=Peace & Harmony

YELLOW=Money

BLUE=Study

PINK=Love

GREEN=Health

GREY=Bye Bye Bad Luck


We also got some Sarubobo hankies, dead useful in summer. See them over at Flickr - link.
(This one has annotations on the phone strap so you don’t have to translate the kanji.)

Friday, August 18th, 2006 Japan, Japanese Culture, Japanese Products, Sushimatic Loves... Trackback URL for this entry