once upon a time, i was browsing tumblr and saw a video, as one tends to do on tumblr dot com.

it was a recording of someone playing with something resembling an origami paper tiger. they would take an (off-screen) fan of some sort and "scare" the tiger against a wall, which made it seem like it was dancing or running away.

i was really enamored with it. i had no idea what it was called, but you'd assume it was something you could locate with the words 'paper tiger scared by fan', as i did, so i didn't think to read other posts linked to this one to see if i could find a real name for it. regardless, it stuck in my mind.

i tried to look it up on google. don't try looking things up on google. google doesn't work anymore. but regardless, i found a reddit post with a broken link (RIP gfycat) and a lot of comments. from these i found the name of these: zubonbo (or 'zubombo')! a folk toy from japan.

i could not read that linked page (and there's no translated one that i could find on wikipedia EN), but i did find another page discussing it.

It has the form of a lion or a tiger. The legs are made of little shijimi clams, like a horseshoe. They were the "fishing weight" to balance the toy. But it can lift up if you put it in front of a small folding screen and use a handfan to bring air under its belly. This was signifying "To move up from your bed".

i managed to find a video in japanese that shows you how to make one by hand with a printed paper, and another but in english. i thought for sure the clam shells would have been replaced with a modern paperweight of some kind, but it works so well, i suppose there's not much need to replace it, huh?

there'ss a few different videos of it in motion. this youtube short shows a sturdy one that more resembles a red-and-yellow hippo than a tiger. this one is very grainy and shaky, but i think it captures the energetic nature of the tiger toy.

this one seems to show it best, and might actually contain the source gif from the reddit post above. and here's one more demo, with spoken voice-over in japanese.

i hope these leave obscurity again! they're so cute! and easy to make if you have clam shells or similar.