Billiken

The Billiken is a charm doll created by an American art teacher and illustrator, Florence Pretz of Kansas City, Missouri, who is said to have seen the mysterious figure in a dream.

[4] The Billiken is also the official mascot of the Royal Order of Jesters,[5] an invitation-only Shriner group affiliated with Freemasonry.

The Billiken sprang from the height of the "Mind-Cure" craze in the United States at the start of the twentieth century.

[8] The Billiken, as a good luck charm, appears multiple times in the Vivien Leigh and Robert Taylor movie Waterloo Bridge.

It is employed as a device that both prompts recollections of the male lead, Robert Taylor, and that links several scenes within the movie as the plot unfolds.

In the United States he became the athletic mascot of Saint Louis University, because the figure was said to resemble coach John R. Bender.

A bronze statue of the Billiken stands in front of the Chaifetz Arena on the Saint Louis University Campus.

A junior version of the Billiken became the mascot of nearby St. Louis University High School; a stainless steel statue of the Junior Billiken stands adjacent to the Danis Fieldhouse, on the St. Louis University High School Campus.

In Nome, Alaska, an Inuit carver by the name Angokwazhuk copied a Billiken figurine in ivory brought to him by a merchant.

[9] The statue was a permanent fixture in the tower until September 2005 when it made its first departure and was taken, as an ambassador of sorts, to Shibuya's Tokyu Hands department store in Tokyo as a part of a fair to promote Naniwa (traditional Osaka) culture.

Each year thousands of visitors place a coin in his donation box and rub the soles of his well-worn feet to make their wishes come true.