Hananuma Masakichi

was a Japanese sculptor an doll maker who specialized in "iki-ningyo" or lifelike dolls. He was trained in the art under Gohei Nezumiya in Tokyo, during the 1870s. A number of his works have survived in American and British collections, notably those of Ripley's Believe It or Not! and the Sheffield Museum (the home town of the father of the Deakin Brothers of Yokohama, dealers in oriental art and curios in the 1890s). and it is lacquered. Anatomically correct glass eyeballs were used and individual holes were drilled in the statue to represent the pores of the skin, and the corresponding hair inserted. The skin was made out of Gofun, a mixture of crushed oyster shells mixed with animal glue.

The statue was later purchased by Robert Ripley in 1934, and was housed in his California Odditorium until his death in 1949. It was one of two self portrait sculptures by Hananuma that Ripley kept in his collection. After Ripley's death, the sculpture toured various Odditoriums until it was stored in the Los Angeles Odditorium where it was damaged in the 1994 Northridge earthquake. The statue was displayed on a rotating platform at the time and the earthquake had caused the platform to spin off the rotator. The sculpture took four months to repair but some signs of damage as still visible in the sculptures hair.

The statue is currently on display in the Amsterdam Odditorium, located on Dam Square and a replica is in the London Odditorium, located at 1 Piccadilly Circus.