Children, I have observed, seem to have an innate affinity for dirt. No matter how recently a parent has dressed the child in freshly laundered clothes, no matter how carefully the parent has attempted to keep the child geographically separated from any substance that might soil or stain, it is just not possible to keep a child clean for more than 60 seconds. I use the word “affinity” advisedly, because it implies not merely a liking, a preference, but a chemical attraction. Kids clearly have a talent for finding dirt, but also, dirt finds them. If you’re a parent, you know what I’m talking about. Eventually, having spent a sum equivalent to your monthly grocery budget on moist towelettes, you give up on keeping the child perpetually clean and set a new, lower but potentially reachable standard of not-entirely-covered-with-mud.

Mud, of course, is that particular species of dirt that children seem to find most fascinating (and which apparently finds them fascinating as well). As far as kids are concerned, mud is cool because it’s gooey and squishy and feels neat and adheres very effectively to your sister’s dress when flung from across the yard. Grown-ups find mud icky for exactly the same reasons, and dried mud, well, that’s somehow an even greater insult to cleanliness—it’s just so…unsightly. Among the words not commonly associated with mud are smooth, shiny, and beautiful. But that’s changing now, thanks to the renaissance of a traditional Japanese art form known as dorodango, shiny mud balls (or, more specifically, hikaru dorodango, ultra-glossy mud balls). Parents are now not only actively encouraging their kids to play in the mud, they’re getting their own hands dirty too as they spend hours refining ordinary dirt into elegant sculptures.

Putting the Shine On
It seems odd to think of mud as something that could become shiny or even smooth. Polished rocks are one thing, but mud wouldn’t seem to be hard enough or dense enough to be polished. With the right technique and a lot of patience, however, it can be.

The full procedure has numerous important details, but essentially the idea is this. You start with a lump of mud, squeeze most of the water out of it, and slowly and gently add layers of ever-finer dry dirt on top, all the while shaping into as perfect a sphere as you can and smoothing off any rough spots or irregularities. Over a period of hours, as the ball dries and you continue refining the surface, a hard shell (or “capsule”) forms on the outside. If you’ve executed the procedure just so and timed it correctly, this surface can be buffed to a high gloss with an ordinary rag.

The result should be an orb about the size of a billiard ball, and just as shiny; its color depends on the kind of soil used, but can vary from nearly white, through yellow, red, and brown, to nearly black, with subtle shadings that make it look more like a fine marble carving than what was recently a mixture of dirt and water.

Having a Ball
In the past several years, the art of dorodango has enjoyed a surge in popularity—first in Japan, and more recently in the United States. The renewed interest is largely due to the work of a developmental psychologist at the Kyoto University of Education named Fumio Kayo. Kayo developed a simple method of making dorodango that could be taught even to young children, and besides keeping them occupied quietly for long periods of time, this activity enabled Kayo to study aspects of children’s play that had gone largely unnoticed, and which have interesting implications for his academic work. One of Kayo’s most striking observations was that children invariably become deeply attached to the mud balls they’ve spent so many hours creating, even if they’re misshapen or otherwise flawed. (Not a surprise to me: I knew that kids get attached to mud, or vice-versa.) Adults who have tried the procedure have reported similar feelings.

Children who spend their afternoons making dorodango do, I’m afraid, end up with dirty hands and clothes. But they also have a stunning work of art to show for it, and that’s got to count for something. I have yet to try dorodango myself, but I love the idea that you can make something so beautiful with three ingredients (dirt, water, and a rag) that virtually anyone in the world can obtain for free. As any child knows, mud is one of life’s simple pleasures. —Joe Kissell

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More Information about Hikaru Dorodango...

Thanks to reader Bruce Gardner for suggesting today’s topic! Bruce is an artist living in New Mexico who makes truly gorgeous dorodango. You can see examples on his Web site dorodango.com, which also includes background information on the art form and helpful instructions for creating your own.

Professor Kayu’s own instructions, including several videos, can be found on his Dorodango site.

Other resources include:

• Shiny Mud Balls at Web Japan
• Polish your mud balls at 37days
• dorodango-sensei and me at Giant Jeans Parlor
• Dorodango in the Wikipedia

Last but not least, if you need any further evidence that mud actively pursues children, look no further than Mud Puddle by Robert N. Munsch. It’s supposedly a work of fiction, but we all know better.

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When I was in high school, I had an alarm clock that I truly hated. It was not merely loud, it was hideously, harshly loud. It sounded pretty much exactly like a smoke alarm, and had precisely the same effect: it scared me senseless every time it went off. I’d wake up, all right, but in such an anxious state that I came to associate the early morning with feelings of terror. Knowing a thing or two about electronics, I decided to perform surgery on the clock and modify it so that instead of making noise, it would flash a bright light in my face when the alarm went off. My modification worked—at least in the sense that the light flashed at the appointed time. What I hadn’t thought through was the fact that at the time the alarm went off, my eyes would be closed (and, more often than not, turned away and buried in a pillow), so while the light flashed merrily away, I kept on sleeping. My invention merely swapped the stress created by a noisy alarm clock for the stress created by being late for school.

Whether due to this adolescent trauma or for more mundane reasons of genetics or environment, I have had an aversion to noise almost as long as I can remember. My idea of a good time is visiting a library, cathedral, or desert location where the loudest sound is that of a page turning or wind blowing; my idea of torture is trying to write while someone is operating a leaf blower outside, being stuck on a plane next to a screaming child, or trying to hold a conversation on a noisy train. If you were to plot my stress level on a graph alongside a graph of the ambient sound level, you’d probably find significant correlations. I used to think my preference for quiet was abnormal if not pathological, until one day I typed “quiet” into Google and came up with Quiet.org—the Right to Quiet Society, one of numerous organizations dedicated to the promotion of quiet. There is in fact a rather large and diverse anti-noise pollution movement afoot, and being a fan of quiet, I find this notion extremely interesting.

Now Hear This
Broadly speaking, there are two main types of what is commonly called noise pollution: low-level, continuous background noise, and extremely loud but intermittent noise. Examples of background noise include radios or TVs left on all the time, appliances such as refrigerators and air conditioners, computers and other devices with cooling fans, and traffic sounds. Loud intermittent noises are things like planes flying overhead, leaf blowers, sirens, vacuum cleaners, and PA systems in clubs and concert venues. Typically the anti-noise groups focus on the second type of noise, citing extensive research on noise-related health concerns: hearing damage from extended exposure to high levels of sound, sleep loss, psychological trauma, and increased stress levels resulting in high blood pressure, aggressive behavior, and even suicide. But there is also a significant drive to reduce background noises, because even though they may not result in hearing loss, the cumulative long-term effect of low-volume but persistent unwanted sounds can have significant impact on one’s mental health and stress level.

It can be tricky business drawing the line between “sound” and “noise,” and even the most ardent anti-noise activists agree that context plays a significant role in determining what should be considered noise or, more specifically, noise pollution. Very loud sounds, however sonorous they may be, can cause hearing damage after a period of time, so it would be fair to call a Bach cantata “music” at 80 decibels but “noise” at 130. Likewise, I may enjoy listening to loud music at a dance club, but the very same music at the same volume would be noise pollution if it’s occurring in the next room when I’m trying to sleep. On the other hand, there are loud noises that would not be called “pollution.” I want to be disturbed by noises like sirens, back-up alarms, or gunfire when they are necessary to alert me to danger. So the generally agreed-upon definition of “noise” is sound that is unwanted or distracting, and “noise pollution” is the term used for unnecessary, excessive environmental noise.

Crying For Silence
Anti-noise pollution groups have a wide variety of aims. Some concern themselves exclusively with aircraft noise in residential areas, for example; others seek more broadly to regulate any noise (factories, motorcycles, lawnmowers, watercraft, etc.) that threatens the peace and tranquility of the population. There are also movements to regulate workplace noise, to set and enforce safe standards for sound at concerts and clubs, and to reduce or eliminate background music at shopping malls, medical offices, and other public places. The overall message is that second-hand noise is a lot like second-hand smoke: it’s one thing if you want to damage your own health, but quite another to inflict noise on other people nearby who cannot escape it, and yet suffer because of it.

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