This e-gasuri features images of Daruma portrayed as a pop-up doll. Also known as Bhodidharma, Daruma is revered in Japan as the founder of Zen Buddhism. Born in India, he traveled through China in the sixth century teaching the discipline of attaining enlightenment through meditation. Portraits of Daruma are common in Zen painting, but in the popular imagination he came to be associated with the pop-up doll because of the belief that he could overcome any obstacle. This e-gasuri is so unusual and idiosyncratic that it is thought to be the work of an imaginative rural weaver working on her own.

Source: Gallery wall text from the exhibition Fowler in Focus: Japanese Pictorial Ikats from the Krauss Collection, 2012