A Japanese doll with a tray in its hands walks silently step by step toward the guests of a tea room. After a guest removes a tea bowl from the tray, the doll waits until it is returned to the tray, and then turns around and walks back to where it came from.
This is the chahakobi ningyo, the most representative of the karakuri ningyo, dolls that move by mechanical means. Believed to have been created sometime during the Edo Period (1600-1868), the karakuri ningyo is said to have charmed daimyo (feudal lords) and wealthy merchants as well as earned the praises of haiku poet and writer Ihara Saikaku. He wrote that it looked "as if it were alive" -- "sanagara ikiru ga gotoshi."
No original karakuri ningyo from the Edo Period remain. However, over the past few decades, dollmaker Harumitsu Han'ya has been recreating the dolls based on the 1796 book "Karakuri Zui," which contains detailed instruction on how to make the different karakuri dolls.