A century on, search continues for Nagoya’s missing ‘blue-eyed dolls’

Next year will mark a century since Japan and the United States exchanged dolls under a project aimed at improving relations that had deteriorated at the time.

Through the efforts of American missionary Sidney Lewis Gulick and Japanese industrialist Eiichi Shibusawa, about 12,000 American dolls were sent to Japan in 1927 as tokens of friendship, while Japan reciprocated by sending 58 traditional Japanese dolls to the United States the same year.

The exchange took place amid worsening relations between the two countries following the passage of a revised U.S. Immigration Act in 1924, which effectively barred immigration from Japan.

The gifts from the United States, collectively called “blue-eyed dolls,” were distributed to elementary schools and kindergartens across Japan.

One of them is believed to have arrived at the predecessor of Osu Elementary School in Nagoya. A photograph hanging at the school captures a group of children performing a welcoming dance in front of a doll in Western clothing, displayed along with Japanese hina dolls.

The caption on the photo describes a “blue-eyed doll,” but the doll itself is now nowhere to be found.

Today, about 340 of the American dolls have been found across Japan, including nine in Aichi Prefecture. But in Nagoya, where 101 dolls are believed to have been distributed, not a single one remains.

One of the blue-eyed dolls found in Aichi Prefecture | CHUNICHI SHIMBUN

Did the dolls not survive the passage of a century and the upheaval of the Pacific War?

One person determined to solve the mystery is 87-year-old Tomoko Ishikawa, a former high school teacher who lives in Nagoya.

Ishikawa, who loves dolls, said she has a tenacious curiosity.

“When there’s something I don’t know, I keep digging until I find out.”

Born in Hokkaido, Ishikawa played as a child with dress-up dolls. But as the war intensified and she was evacuated to a less populated area within Hokkaido, her dolls became lost.

After marrying and moving to Nagoya, she became interested in dolls again when she was in her 40s and raising children. She saw an exhibition of traditional Japanese dolls and was so fascinated that she began taking classes in Tokyo to learn how to make them.

“Perhaps I had trauma from losing the connection with dolls when I was a child,” she said.

Searching for dolls

Ishikawa’s fascination with dolls never faded.

In her 70s, after retiring from her career as a Japanese-language teacher, Ishikawa attended a doll study session in Kyoto. There, she met an American collector who brought an old Japanese doll that had been preserved in the United States.

Some people at the gathering speculated the doll might be “Miss Aichi,” one of the Japanese dolls sent from Aichi Prefecture to the United States in return for the blue-eyed dolls.

To find proof, Ishikawa combed through archives and libraries, contacted researchers and eventually obtained a photograph of Miss Aichi taken before it was sent to the United States. The evidence helped establish the doll’s identity.

Miss Aichi, one of the Japanese dolls sent from Japan to the United States | CHUNICHI SHIMBUN

With that success, Ishikawa gained confidence and set out to find clues to the whereabouts of Nagoya’s missing blue-eyed dolls.

She emailed every elementary school and kindergarten believed to have received one. Whenever a school replied that it might have relevant historical materials, she went there in person.

Together with school principals and other staff, she pored over old documents. Every time they found a record stating that a doll had been presented to the school in 1927, they celebrated together. “So, a doll did arrive at this school, too,” she remembers thinking.

The blue-eyed dolls left their mark on Japanese history, but many of them eventually disappeared.

In 1941, Japan and the United States went to war, 14 years after the American dolls had arrived. Newspapers and radio broadcasts urged people to destroy them as “enemy-country dolls.” Some may also have been lost in air raids carried out by U.S. forces.

Ishikawa’s research found that Osu Elementary School had some of the most extensive records in Nagoya. Among them was the photograph, as well as a Japanese translation of a letter from the United States.

“If the dolls had been smashed during the war, there probably wouldn’t have been any records left either,” Ishikawa said. “But perhaps someone might have tried to preserve them.”

She believes in the impulse of people to cherish dolls — and has not given up hope that one of Nagoya’s missing blue-eyed dolls will someday turn up.

Vanished in history

In carrying out the doll exchange project in 1927, Ryukichi Sekiya, an education ministry bureaucrat at the time, played a crucial role in bringing Japanese dolls to the United States.

Sekiya, then 42, carried 58 Japanese dolls and traveled across the United States to gift them in the earnest hope that the charming dolls would help improve relations between the two nations.

The 1924 Immigration Act reflected the hostile sentiment held among white workers toward Japanese immigrants, who were often willing to work for lower wages. Growing friction over Japan’s expanding overseas interests in places such as Manchuria — now northeastern China — was also behind the revision of the act.

For many Japanese, who believed their country had joined the ranks of the Western powers after emerging victorious from World War I, the anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States was both bewildering and infuriating.

One American who worked tirelessly to block the legislation was Gulick, a missionary who had lived in Japan for more than two decades and was deeply sympathetic toward the country.

Gulick ultimately failed to stop the law. But he turned his attention to the next generation, raising donations across the United States with the belief that “hopes lie with the children.”

He arranged for about 12,000 dolls to be sent to Japan in time for the annual Hina Matsuri (Doll Festival).

In Japan, Shibusawa led a fundraising campaign, collecting donations nationwide to send 58 Japanese dolls to the United States as a gesture of thanks.

When the dolls arrived in the United States with Sekiya in 1927, they were greeted warmly by Americans and Japanese Americans alike.

Saeko Ii, 50, a member of the Japan International Doll and Toy Research Association and an expert on the history of the Japan-U.S. doll exchange, recently published a study based on records of correspondence between Sekiya and Japan’s Foreign Ministry.

The letters suggest that efforts were made to arrange for the Japanese dolls to be sent to California, where anti-Japanese sentiment and discrimination against Japanese immigrants were particularly strong.

Sekiya completed his tour of the United States safely and came away with a sense of accomplishment, to a certain extent.

In a book he published later, Sekiya wrote that Americans showed their gratitude for the Japanese dolls that had come all the way to promote friendship between the two countries.

“I was deeply moved by that,” he wrote.

Three years after his trip, Sekiya published a booklet titled, “The Diary of a Japanese Ambassador Doll,” which was distributed to elementary schools across Japan.

Ryukichi Sekiya (back, in a suit) is welcomed along with Japanese dolls he brought, in New York in 1927. | YOKOHAMA DOLL MUSEUM / VIA CHUNICHI SHIMBUN

Written in a form of narratives by Hideko Yamato, one of the Japanese dolls that had traveled to the United States, the booklet made two requests.

The first was that Japan send clothing and other items for the Japanese dolls in the United States so that the dolls could be properly cared for and kept well dressed.

The second was that children in Japan not forget to take care of the dolls sent from the United States.

Ii believes there was a larger hope behind the requests.

“Through fulfilling these wishes, there must have been a desire to keep the door open for exchanges between Japan and the United States,” she said.

But the requests ultimately went unheeded.

After the war began between the two countries, Sekiya heard a radio broadcast urging listeners to immediately destroy or burn the blue-eyed dolls, claiming that “the dolls had been sent to Japan to deceive children.”

In his autobiography, published later, Sekiya wrote that he was unable to hold back his tears upon hearing such a broadcast.

“I don’t know what to call it — frustration or shame,” he wrote.

The attempt to rebuild friendship through a doll exchange vanished in the tides of international affairs.

But a century later, people such as Ishikawa are still searching for the missing dolls — and, in doing so, are keeping alive the hopes that were once entrusted to them.

This section features topics and issues from the Chubu region covered by the Chunichi Shimbun. The original articles were published Aug. 4 and Aug. 5.