Small Statues Indentification Help!

Hello!

I need some help identifying what these small statues may be called and perhaps their origin for my eBay listing. Hopefully, the little writings on the clothes will help. Any information is much appreciated, thank you!
Height: 32in

 

Look like Japanese figures although writing is not...

 

also at 32" I would not describe these as "small"!

 

The left hand of each looks like there was something inserted there that the guy was holding. Seems like the wrong hand for a sword. The heads are different; bodies look the same except for how they are painted. What material do you think they are made of?

 

How about something like this?

Debora

 

They look like gessoed and polychromed wood to me

 

They might be from a fairground or something like that?

I believe the figures are meant to Japanese men, but the pseudo oriental writing combined with the gesso and polychromed wood construction -- probably not asian in origin.

 

Both China and Japan have long traditions of creating polychrome wood sculpture, including preparation of the surface with various clays and gesso type mixtures. Conservation of a Chinese Guanyin from the Jin period in the Victoria and Albert Museum revealed "many layers of clay, paint, paper and gesso on top of the wood".
(John Larson: Statue of the Bodhisattva Guanyin. in The Art of the Conservator, British Museum Press, 1992.) So such construction is not inconsistent with an Asian origin.

But they do have sort of a fairground or advertising quality to them.

 

Yes but these just have a thin gesso layer under the paintwork, (not typically asian in my experience) and of course combined with the pseudo-calligraphy, well ...

 

Maybe not pseudo at all, but one of their spirit scripts: https://japanshrinestemples.blogspot.com/2014/08/ahiru-kusa-characters.html

 

Fun theory, but wishful thinking IMO