Whatever Happened to the Self-Portrait of Hananuma Masakichi?
Joshua Foer is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Joshua is a freelance science journalist and the co-founder of the Atlas Obscura: A Compendium of the World's Wonders, Curiosities, and Esoterica, with Dylan Thuras.
A couple years ago, I came across the incredible story of the 19th-century Japanese sculptor Hananuma Masakichi in Umberto Eco's essay collection Travels in Hyperreality. After being diagnosed with tuberculosis, Masakichi decided that his last great project would be to carve a perfectly life-like portrait of himself out of wood, to leave behind for the woman he loved. The hair, fingernails, teeth, and toenails of the sculpture were all pulled directly from his own body. The above image is from an old postcard of the statue, which has the following caption:
The statue is composed of over 2000 separate pieces being hollow with the exception of the feet. The head, thighs, calves, and every member of the anatomy was carved separately and the whole put together. The joints were perfectly made, dovetailed, and glued together -- no metal nails, only wooden pegs or pins beings used to fasten where necessary. After putting all the members together and finishing as far as the woodwork was concerned, he painted and lacquered the statue to give it the flesh and blood appearance; The hairs which adorn the figure belong to himself. He used clippings of his head and ears and each and every hair is bored for and put in one by one. The body hairs were actually pulled from his own body and put in exactly the same position as they occupied on himself. The eyes were also made by the artist and are the wonder of the oculist and optical precision.
And just in case this story wasn't poetic enough already, Ripley's Believe It Or Not!, which owns the statue, holds that Masakichi "later regained his health but lost his lover."
When I originally wrote about Masakichi in the Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society, the only information I could find about the sculpture's present whereabouts was a notice saying that it had once been on display in a Ripley's museum, but was put in storage after being badly damaged in an earthquake.
I called up Ripley's the other day to find out about the fate of the sculpture, and was connected to their archivist, Ed Meyer. He informed me that it got banged up pretty badly in the 1989 San Francisco earthquake. "It was on a rotating platform, and it spun right off the rotator," he said. It took four months for a professional restorer to get Hananuma back into shape, however, "the hair still looks a little funny." The self-portrait is now back on display in Ripley's Wisconsin Dells location.
None of the Ripley's museums have yet been entered into the Atlas Obscura. But surely they all will be soon!
UPDATE: I found this picture at Sideshow World. Man or Image?! I guess that's the real Masakichi on the right.
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speaking of which...whatever happened to the kircher society? i really liked the blog, and they were in tune to a lot of below the radar stuff (like the silbo whistling language or miracle fruit before everyone else caught on)
i am an avid fan of ripley's and i was lucky enough to see this sculpture in the mid-80's at the museum in fisherman's wharf. i was, however, at the wisconsin dell's location in 2004 and did not see it then. it must've been transferred there not too long ago. the midwest = no earthquakes - just beware of floods and tornadoes.
I've never seen this statue, but the pictures of it are awesome, and how lifelike it is. I routinely venture to the Ripley's in St. Augustine. These museums are full of wonderful things.
Amazing! That's exactly how I intend to make the abs on my self portrait look.
I've seen the statue at the Wis Dells Museum, and I remembered the story from my own childhood. It didn't get my daughter's attention as it had mine, and we walked right by it the next time we went to it. She's 12 now, about the same age I was when I heard the story.
I saw this when I was a kid in the 60s. Awesome piece of work that I think only the Japanese have the patience for. ; )
Came in to say what # 1 said. I was also a big fan of the Kircher blog. Finally was able to log into Atlas Obscura...looks pretty cool. They have one of my fav. islands there...Ball's Pyramid. What an amazing place that would be to visit on the night of a full moon!
She might have been happy with just a life-like cast of his, you know...
@#2, MISTERVEGA; "just beware of floods and tornadoes" and, may I add, termites.
I've been to Ripley's in Niagara Falls. It was a lot of fun, actually. As for the statue...it's scary-weird realistic. We're sure it's actually a statue and not the guy himself, right...?
anyone else suspecting that he embellished maybe just a liiiiitle bit on those abs?
"later regained his health but lost his lover."
Sounds about right. If your partner decides what would really be the best thing to do for you when he finds that he is dying is spend countless hours of that dwindling time away from you carving a statue of himself, then pulling his on finger and toenails and teeth to place in that statue, then getting the hell away from that selfish nut is an excellent idea.
"anyone else suspecting that he embellished maybe just a liiiiitle bit on those abs?"
Are you suggesting that he may have been less than buff just because he was wasting away from TB at the time? That's silly.
There's a rather nice vintage postcard of the statue on ebay: http://bit.ly/YiMxu
#10 posted by nutbastard
and
#12 posted by nanuq
Actually, doesn't TB cause you to lose a lot of your body fat? If so, maybe that's why the abs are so prominent. Just a guess.
I saw it (or a replica of it) in the Ripley's in Picadilly, London. Scared the crap out of my gf.
I saw this a few times in the Wisconsin Dells. It is an amazing piece of art, but wigs me out a little. To think of all that time and effort put into its creation... and here it sits in Wisconsin!
Looks like Ripley's cartoon handwriting on the photo. He was an awesome cartoonist and letterer in his own right.
@#4
Oh yeah. He totally cheated a little on those deltoids too. ;)
you may be assured that he did not change anything.
here you kids go - @ 0:33
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kucZ0UBjr3U&feature=related
Obviously the cure for tb is to pull out all your nails and teeth. And body hair.
I remember seeing this statue at Sutro Baths, a museum in San Francisco, CA. It was exhibited for years but I viewed it in the early to mid-sixties. Sutro Baths burnt to the ground in August 1966.