Left: “Rouge Oxen”, featuring kuruma ushi, an ox-cart from Kyoto, top-left. Middle-left shows a black kneeling ox bearing the legend: “If a woman buys rouge on the Ox Day in winter, she will take out such an ox and name it bene ushi, or rouge ox.” Made of clay, this ox was given in return for a prayer granted at the Ushi-no-miya or Ox Shrine at Tennoji, Osaka. Bottom-left: ox with pack saddle from the city of Tsu, Ise. The Ox is always associated with Tenjin, the God of Letters. (Volume 3, pg. 8)

Featured on PDR in the collection Unai no tomo: Catalogues of Japanese Toys (1891–1923)

When Brooklyn Museum Curator of Ethnology Stewart Culin visited Japan for the first time in the fall of 1909, he escaped from the harangues of curio dealers by asking them to bring him a traditional children’s toy called burri-burri. Culin knew this rare and obscure object only from a specimen in Tokyo’s Imperial Museum and another owned by the collector Seifu Shimizu. Culin’s request to the dealers quickly confirmed the toy’s rarity, as neither he nor any of his numerous assistants were ever offered one. In the end, Culin asked Shimizu to make him a copy to bring back to Brooklyn.