RICHARD FREEMAN: The Cabinet of Dr Yamada, Part 1

Whilst searching the Internet for pictures of Tatsu or Japanese dragons for my new book. The Great Yokai Encyclopedia: An Z to Z of Japanese Monsters, I came across a photograph that was labelled ‘sea-dragon’. It showed an oriental man standing next to a large skeleton supposedly washed up on Awaji Island and discovered by Dr Takeshi Yamada. The skeleton was certainly not a dragon or any other kind of reptile. It seemed to show a Steller’s Sea cow (Hydrodamalis gigas), the giant sirenian supposedly hunted into extinction in 1768. There have, however, been a number of claimed modern sightings and at least one alleged carcass.

Awaji Island is an island in Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan, in the eastern part of the Seto Inland Sea between the islands of Honshū and Shikoku. It is far removed from the haunt of Steller’s sea cow. This aroused suspicion. The picture looked photoshopped and a quick internet search revealed that Dr Takeshi Yamada is a member of the Minnisota Association of Rouge Taxidermists, people who created sideshow ‘gaffs’ or strange creatures much like the Victorian ‘nondescripts’. He was in Osaka, Japan in 1960. As an international exchange student of Osaka Art University, he moved to the United States in 1983 and studied art at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, CA and Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD in 1983-85, and completed his Bachelor of Fine Art degree in 1985. Yamada obtained his Master of Fine Art Degree in 1987 at the University of Michigan, School of Art in Ann Arbor, MI.

These kind of gaffs have largely replaced real human freaks in carnival sideshows in the modern age. England's very own Walter Potter (1835-1918) made amazing constructions and diaramas from stuffed animals that were displayed at Potter’s Museum of curiosites until its tragic closure and dispersal.



In Part Two we look at some of his creations.