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　The Fuku-Daruma is a good-luck charm which many people in Japan purchase during the beginning of the New Year with hopes that it will bring good fortune.? Presently, more than a hundred local farm families make Fuku-Daruma, producing over one and half million annually.
　The Fuku-Daruma originated here at the Shorinzan darumaji. Shinetsu, the founder of this temple, began a custom of giving the farmers pictures of Bodhidharma, which he would draw with a single brushstroke 〈illustration at right〉,as a talisman to ward off evil during the year. Later, during a famine in the Tenmei period (1781-1788), Tohgaku, the ninth priest, made a wooden effigy of Bodhidharma based?on the pictures. He taught the farmers how to make these “Daruma dolls" so that they would have something to sell to tide them over in bad years.