"Blue-Eyed Doll" in Japan Found Her Name: Betty
This episode may be a little far-fetched for non-Japanese, but this desk can't resist an urging temptation to explore it for the benefit of many friends of Japan around the globe.
First, just read the following "poem" freely translated from the original in Japanese by Ujo Noguchi, a renowned lyricist who wrote a number of lyrics for children's songs:
A blue-eyed celluloid doll
Born in America
The day she arrived at a port in Japan
Her eyes were filled with tears
"I can't understand the language you speak,
What can I do if I ever get lost?"
"Please, my dear girlfriends of Japan
Please, please kindly play with me".
Whatever you make of it, the poem depicts a lone doll just arrived from America on a friendly mission to make friends in Japan. This is the real story as it happened. Not only one but thousands of blue-eyed dolls did arrive as Japanese Friendship Dolls a.k.a. Japanese Ambassador Dolls.
A doll-exchanging program was initiated to ease cultural tensions in 1920's with Sidney Lewis Gulick for US and Eiichi Shibusawa for Japan. Gallick (1860-1945) was an educator, author, and missionary who devoted much of his time for the cause of promoting friendship between the two countries; Eiichi Shibusawa (1840-1931) was a Japanese industrialist known today as the father of Japanese capitalism.
Gallick and Shibusawa exchanged dolls, so to say, and there arrived in 1927 12,739 American dolls through the Committee on World Friendship Among Children and were donated to primary schools across the country and 58 fancy Japanese dolls, 32-33 inches tall and dressed in beautiful kimonos made of silk, to American museums and libraries.
History tells of a course of events that those dolls had least thought of. Many of the American blue-eyed dolls were either burnt or lost, no one knowing what their names were.
Then in late August, a piece of paper was found at a primary school in Kamogawa, Chiba, buried among the blue-eyed-dolls-related documents, identifying the name of the doll to be "Betty".
Now, the charming poem has finally found the name its heroine.
