Haniwa Figure of a Female
500s
- Medium
- earthenware with traces of pigment
- Classification
- Sculpture
- Dimensions
- Overall: 58.4 x 30.5 cm (23 x 12 in.)
- Culture
- Japan, Kofun period (300–710 CE)
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Japanese Art
- Credit line
- James Parmelee Fund by exchange
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
Figures in a variety of dress including military and ceremonial garb start to appear on Japanese earthen mounded tombs called old mounds (kofun) from the 400s to 500s CE. This fragment depicts a woman with red triangles on her face and wearing jewelry. Archaeologists speculate that the facial markings had a ritual or symbolic function, perhaps indicating she is a female shaman. Many figures of this kind have been found in digs in the Kanto region of eastern Japan. We can only guess at the meaning of the clay cylinders called haniwa.
