---
title: "Daruma Bento: Takasaki's ekiben in a red daruma doll"
description: "Daruma Bento, the ekiben of Takasaki Station, comes in a red daruma-shaped container that becomes a coin bank. What is inside, and why Takasaki makes daruma."
url: https://kama-meshi.com/en/articles/daruma-bento
language: en
published: 2026-11-11
category: "Food and culture › Ekiben"
tags: ["Ekiben", "RailwayHistory"]
author: "Oginoya Editorial Team"
publisher: "Oginoya Co., Ltd."
translations:
  zh-TW: https://kama-meshi.com/zh-tw/articles/daruma-bento
  ko: https://kama-meshi.com/ko/articles/daruma-bento
  zh-CN: https://kama-meshi.com/zh-cn/articles/daruma-bento
  zh-HK: https://kama-meshi.com/zh-hk/articles/daruma-bento
  th: https://kama-meshi.com/th/articles/daruma-bento
  de: https://kama-meshi.com/de/articles/daruma-bento
  fr: https://kama-meshi.com/fr/articles/daruma-bento
  es: https://kama-meshi.com/es/articles/daruma-bento
---

# Daruma Bento: Takasaki's ekiben in a red daruma doll

![Red daruma dolls piled together, their faces painted with black eyebrows and mustaches and their bodies lettered in gold](https://kama-meshi.com/_astro/takasaki-daruma-darumaji-2010.CdfO7lLj_Z1jrNex.webp)

Daruma Bento is the [ekiben](https://kama-meshi.com/en/articles/what-is-ekiben) of Takasaki Station in Gunma Prefecture: soy-flavored rice topped with chicken and mountain vegetables, packed in a red container shaped like a *daruma* doll, which serves as a coin bank once the meal is finished. It has that shape because Takasaki makes more daruma than anywhere else in Japan, and every January they are sold at a fair at Shōrinzan Daruma-ji, a temple on the edge of the city.

## What is in the red container

Takasaki Bentō, known as Takaben, put Daruma Bento on sale in 1960. The rice is *chameshi*, cooked with soy sauce. On top are simmered mountain vegetables and mushrooms, tips of bamboo shoot, shiitake, cold chicken, chicken rolled around burdock root, simmered *hanamame* beans, black and red konnyaku, chestnut, pickled baby eggplant, *yamagobō* (mountain burdock) and *yamakurage*, strips of dried stem lettuce with a crunchy bite.

Takaben describes the meal as mountain produce cooked and arranged in the manner of *fucha ryōri*, the vegetarian cooking that came from China and was handed down in the temples of the Ōbaku school of Zen. Shōrinzan Daruma-ji is an Ōbaku temple.

![An open red container filled with rice, sliced chicken and vegetables, with a red lid molded with a face beside it](https://kama-meshi.com/_astro/daruma-bento-2014.ChHHJuT3_Z186bpA.webp "Daruma Bento and its lid, 2014.")

## A lunch that leaves a coin bank

The first Daruma Bento containers were ceramic. Today's is red plastic, adopted because it is easier to carry and more hygienic. The lid is molded with the daruma's face, and its mouth is a slot, which is what lets the empty container work as a coin bank. In November 2000 Takaben added a Hello Kitty Daruma Bento, made at Sanrio's request, with a container that becomes a Hello Kitty lunch box.

From about 1955, [ekiben named for a local specialty appeared all over Japan](https://kama-meshi.com/en/articles/ekiben-history). The leading example, [Tōge no Kamameshi](https://kama-meshi.com/en/articles/what-is-kamameshi), went on sale at Yokokawa Station, farther along the line from Takasaki, on February 1, 1958, in [an earthenware pot of Mashiko ware](https://kama-meshi.com/en/articles/the-kama-pot). Daruma Bento followed two years later, also in ceramic. A Japanese encyclopedia's list of [well-known ekiben](https://kama-meshi.com/en/articles/famous-ekiben) names the two one after the other: the Daruma Bento of Takasaki Station, the Tōge no Kamameshi of Yokokawa Station.

## What a daruma is

Daruma is the Japanese name for Bodhidharma, the monk from India regarded as the founder of Zen in China, where he arrived early in the sixth century. He is said to have sat facing a wall in meditation for nine years at the Shaolin temple on Mount Song. The doll shows him seated, wrapped from the head down in a red robe that hides his arms and legs.

A daruma is weighted at the base, so that it rights itself when knocked over. Self-righting toys were made in Japan in the Muromachi period (1336–1573), and papier-mâché daruma built the same way are thought to have appeared in Edo, today's Tokyo, from the Kyōhō era (1716–36) onward. With the saying *nanakorobi yaoki*, "fall seven times, rise eight," they spread across the country as charms for good fortune. When smallpox spread through Edo, red was believed to drive away harm, and red daruma were placed at the pillows of sick children.

In eastern Japan, and in the Kantō region around Tokyo above all, most daruma are sold with blank white eyes. From about Aichi Prefecture westward, most have their pupils painted and wear a headband. The owner of a blank-eyed daruma makes a wish and paints in one pupil. With a Takasaki daruma this is the doll's left eye, the one on the right as you face it. The other is painted when the wish has come true or a year has passed safely.

![A red daruma doll with blank white eyes, black eyebrows and mustache, and gold characters on its belly](https://kama-meshi.com/_astro/daruma-blank-eyes-2015.E4O2sf1r_ZF7WEp.webp "A daruma before its eyes are painted in. The gold characters on its belly read fuku-iri.")

## Winter work for silk farmers

Takasaki daruma are made mainly in the Toyooka and Yawata districts, and until Toyooka village merged into Takasaki in 1955 they were called Toyooka daruma. Yamagata Tomogorō of Toyooka is credited with starting the craft in the Kansei era (1789–1801). As Shōrinzan Daruma-ji tells it, the eruption of Mount Asama in 1783 was followed by famine, and the temple's ninth abbot, Tōgaku, carved a wooden mold from a one-stroke drawing of Daruma by the temple's founding priest and taught Tomogorō to make papier-mâché daruma, which were sold at the temple's New Year festival.

Farmers made daruma from autumn to spring, after the rice was harvested and the wheat sown. At first red pigment was hard to get and few were made. That changed when the port of Yokohama opened in 1859. A scarlet pigment began to come in, raw silk went out, and silk farming spread. Gunma had long raised silkworms. A silkworm sheds its skin four times before it spins its cocoon, and farmers called each emergence *okiru*, "getting up." The doll that always gets up became their guardian.

A mold carver named Ashina Tetsujūrō, a former samurai of the Kanazawa domain, listened to people who wanted the doll to look like a cocoon and made a rounder mold, with room on the belly for the characters *fuku-iri*, "fortune enters." Takasaki daruma still follow it. Their eyebrows are painted as cranes and the mustache that runs from nose to mouth as turtles, and wishes such as safety for the household and success in business are written in gold on the shoulders. Lettering is rare on daruma elsewhere in Japan.

By about 1909 there were 18 makers. In 1915, when there were more than 40, they formed the body that is now the Gunma Daruma Doll Manufacturers' Cooperative Union. It has some 50 member workshops, and by its own count from around 2003 they shipped about 900,000 daruma a year, the great majority of Japan's papier-mâché daruma. Gunma's dry winter wind, the *karakkaze*, suits the work of pasting paper and painting. The bodies were once built up sheet by sheet on a wooden mold. Machines took over that work from about the 1970s, and most bodies are now vacuum-formed from paper pulp. The faces are still painted by hand, one at a time.

## The temple and the fairs

Shōrinzan Daruma-ji stands on high ground south of the Usui River. Its story begins in 1680, when a wandering ascetic named Ichiryō carved a seated figure of Daruma from a fragrant old log that a flood had carried down the river. The temple was founded in 1697 by Sakai Tadataka, lord of Maebashi, to guard his castle from an unlucky direction. The German architect Bruno Taut lived in a small house in its grounds, the Senshintei, for two years and three months from August 1, 1934.

![A wooden temple hall with a curved gable and three bell ropes, and red daruma dolls stacked along its veranda](https://kama-meshi.com/_astro/shorinzan-darumaji-hall-2013.D_jpS_t1_Z1T2goh.webp "The main hall of Shōrinzan Daruma-ji, 2013.")

The temple's daruma fair, the Shōrinzan Nanakusa Taisai Daruma-ichi, is held every year on January 6 and 7. Since 2017 the city, its tourism association and the makers' cooperative have also held the Takasaki Daruma-ichi on the first two days of the year, on the avenue leading from the west exit of Takasaki Station. In 2020 it drew 370,000 people. A book of 1829, *Takasaki Danzushō*, shows daruma on sale at the year's first market in Tamachi, in the middle of the town.

## From Takasaki to Yokokawa

Takasaki was a post town on the Nakasendō highway, at the fork where the Mikuni Kaidō left for Echigo, today's Niigata. The railway from Ueno in Tokyo reached it in May 1884, the year from which Takaben dates its founding. Today the Hokuriku Shinkansen parts from the Jōetsu Shinkansen at Takasaki on its way to Karuizawa and Nagano. Takasaki was the [third station in Japan where ekiben were sold](https://kama-meshi.com/en/articles/ekiben-history), in March 1886, after Utsunomiya and Yokokawa.

The Shin-etsu Main Line leaves Takasaki along the Usui River and now ends 29.7 kilometers on, at Yokokawa, at the foot of the [Usui Pass](https://kama-meshi.com/en/articles/yokokawa-usui). That stretch opened on October 15, 1885, and [Oginoya](https://kama-meshi.com/en/articles/oginoya-history) began business at Yokokawa Station the same day. On the way the line crosses Toyooka. In December 2024 the new station planned there, between Kita-Takasaki and Gumma-Yawata, was given its name: Toyooka-Daruma.

## References

- [Takaben: Daruma Bento](https://www.takaben.co.jp/obento/ekiben/daruma.html)
- [Takaben: Company profile](https://www.takaben.co.jp/company/index.html)
- [Takaben: Hello Kitty Daruma Bento](https://www.takaben.co.jp/obento/ekiben/kitty.html)
- [Takasaki City: The history of Takasaki daruma](https://www.city.takasaki.gunma.jp/page/3053.html)
- [Takasaki City: About Takasaki daruma](https://www.city.takasaki.gunma.jp/site/sightseeing/3052.html)
- [Takasaki City: Kōhō Takasaki, October 15, 2016 (PDF)](https://www.city.takasaki.gunma.jp/uploaded/attachment/2569.pdf)
- [Takasaki City: Kōhō Takasaki, April 2025, on Toyooka-Daruma Station (PDF)](https://www.city.takasaki.gunma.jp/uploaded/attachment/28833.pdf)
- [Takasaki Daruma-ichi: official site](https://takasaki-darumaichi.com/)
- [Gunma Daruma Doll Manufacturers' Cooperative Union: What is Takasaki daruma](https://takasakidaruma.net/daruma/about/)
- [Gunma Daruma Doll Manufacturers' Cooperative Union: History](https://takasakidaruma.net/daruma/history/)
- [Gunma Daruma Doll Manufacturers' Cooperative Union: How daruma are made](https://takasakidaruma.net/daruma/process/)
- [Gunma Prefecture: Takasaki daruma (traditional crafts)](https://www.pref.gunma.jp/site/kougei/690379.html)
- [Shōrinzan Daruma-ji: History](https://www.daruma.or.jp/%e6%ad%b4%e5%8f%b2/)
- [Shōrinzan Daruma-ji: The temple of the engi daruma](https://www.daruma.or.jp/%e7%b8%81%e8%b5%b7%e3%81%a0%e3%82%8b%e3%81%be/)
- [Shōrinzan Daruma-ji: Bruno Taut](https://www.daruma.or.jp/%e9%81%94%e7%a3%a8%e5%af%ba%e3%81%a8%e3%83%96%e3%83%ab%e3%83%bc%e3%83%8e%e3%83%bb%e3%82%bf%e3%82%a6%e3%83%88/)
- [Kotobank: “Daruma”](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E9%81%94%E7%A3%A8-94748)
- [Kotobank: “Fucha ryōri”](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E6%99%AE%E8%8C%B6%E6%96%99%E7%90%86-125009)
- [Kotobank: “Takasaki”](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E9%AB%98%E5%B4%8E-92551)
- [Kotobank: “Shin-etsu Main Line”](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E4%BF%A1%E8%B6%8A%E6%9C%AC%E7%B7%9A-81337)
- [Kotobank: “Ekiben” (Japanese dictionaries and encyclopedias)](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E9%A7%85%E5%BC%81-444219)
- [Oginoya: Company timeline](https://www.oginoya.co.jp/tougenokamameshi/history/)

Image credits (resized for display):

- [puffyjet / Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Daruma_dolls_at_Daruma-ji_(Takasaki)_2010-04-01_01.jpg), [CC BY 2.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)
- [Qurren / Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Takaben_Daruma_Bento.jpg), [CC BY-SA 3.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0), 2014
- [Crisco 1492 / Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Daruma_doll,_cut_out,_03.jpg), Public domain, 2015
- [小池 隆 / Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%E5%B0%91%E6%9E%97%E5%B1%B1%E9%81%94%E7%A3%A8%E5%AF%BA%E9%9C%8A%E7%AC%A6%E5%A0%82.JPG), [CC BY 3.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), 2013