Haniwa Figure of a Female (500s): Art, History and Details

Haniwa Figure of a Female (500s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the 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.

Object facts

• Title: Haniwa Figure of a Female
• Date: 500s
• Culture: Japan, Kofun period (300–710 CE)
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: earthenware with traces of pigment
• Dimensions: Overall: 58.4 x 30.5 cm (23 x 12 in.)
• Collection: Japanese Art
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1962.39

Collection credit

James Parmelee Fund by exchange

Further reading listed by the museum

• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.
• Moore, Janet Gaylord. The Many Ways of Seeing: An Introduction to the Pleasures of Art. Cleveland: World Pub. Co., 1968.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1969. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1969.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.