Miss Miyazaki Japanese Friendship Doll

Concerned by the anti-Japanese atmosphere in the United States in the 1920s, Dr. Sidney Gulick established the Committee on World Friendship Among Children and began sending friendship dolls to Japan. Japan reciprocated by sending friendship dolls to the US in 1927, with Minnesota receiving a doll known as "Miss Miyazaki."

With the arrival of many Japanese immigrants in the early 1900s, undercurrents of discrimination and resentment began to surface in the United States. Several events marked this anti-Japanese movement. Among them were the founding of the Asiatic Exclusion League, the defeat of a proposal for racial equality at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, and President Calvin Coolidge’s signing of the Immigration Act of 1924, which ended Japanese immigration to the United States.

In the midst of these anti-Japanese sentiments, Congregational minister Dr. Sidney Gulick made his voice heard. Gulick, an American missionary who had lived in Japan for twenty years, knew that Japanese children had a special love for dolls. In 1926 he established the Committee on World Friendship Among Children and began a mission of friendship that involved sending dolls from America to Japan. Over 12,000 friendship dolls were sent to Japan, each with its own passport, train and boat tickets, and handwritten letters from American children.

In the Japanese tradition of reciprocation, fifty-eight torei-ningyo (return-gesture dolls) were sent to the United States in 1927. Following a national goodwill tour the dolls were exhibited in museums and public libraries across the country, with most states receiving at least one doll. A doll named “Miss Miyazaki,” named after the prefecture on the island of Kyushu, was given to Minnesota and deposited with the Minneapolis Public Library in 1931.

Yoshitoku Doll Company manufactured both the doll and her thirty-four-piece trousseau. The figure itself is an example of the itchimatsu style of dolls designed to resemble children and often given to children as gifts. It stands thirty-two inches tall and features gofun (shell-white) skin, painted features, human hair, an open-mouthed expression, and inset glass eyes. It wears a vibrant red kimono with a flower and bird motif, a silk brocade obi (belt), an obi age (a scarf that supports the obi) and an obi jime (a supportive string). The haneri (collar) is white with an embroidered floral design.

The doll’s outer kimono is embellished with gold-colored thread and covers two under layers: a pink kimono with a floral design and a reddish orange under-kimono with a gold-colored pattern. While the obi is tan with an embroidered floral pattern, the obi age is red and white with a checked pattern. End tassels and an embroidered floral design decorate the white obi jime. The doll wears only white tabi (socks), though the original ensemble included shoes. Her thirty-four-piece trousseau includes a dresser, a chest of drawers, a sewing chest, a porcelain tea set, a fan, and a mirror.

The doll remained in Minneapolis Public Library storage until 2016, when a librarian at the network’s Ridgedale branch confirmed its location. She and a colleague at the Central Library branch enlisted a Japanese doll expert to verify the doll’s provenance and evaluate its condition.

In 2016 the Hennepin County Library transferred both the doll and her trousseau to the Minnesota Historical Society. Only two items—a parasol and slippers—were missing. In 2017 Miss Miyazaki was meticulously restored in Tokyo by Yoshitoku, Company, Limited, the same company that had made her ninety years earlier. Minnesota Doll Jamboree Council and Minnesota Go-fer Dollies Club donated money that funded the restoration.