Iki-ningyō (生人形) were a type of ningyō, Japanese traditional dolls. They are life-sized life-like dolls, that were popular in misemono during the Edo period of Japan.[1][2] The name is now used mainly to denote shop store mannequins.[2]
Artists famous during the Edo period for making iki-ningyō include Akiyama Heijūrō, Takedoa Nuinosuke, Matsumoto Kisaburō (松本喜三郎), and Yasumoto Kamehachi (安本亀八). The dolls that they made were novel not just for their subjects that shocked viewers — figures lying in pools of their own blood, for example, or Akiyama Heijuro's "Development of a Fetus", a life-sized model of a pregnant woman whose abdomen opens up to reveal twelve supposed stages of development of a human fetus in the womb — but for their influence upon the genre of ningyō. The works of Kamehachi and Kisaburō, in particular, contributed to the form an extreme sense of realism.[3]
The earliest exhibition of iki-ningyō, as recorded in Tommori Seiichi's biography of Kamehachi, was the 1852-02-02 exhibition by Ōe Chūbei entitled Representations of Modern Dolls in this Year of Abindance in the Naniwashinchi brothel district of Osaka. Chūbei's name imayō-ningyō ("modern dolls") indicated that he considered this form of doll to be modern and new.[3]