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The Blue-Eyed Doll Song

Bridging the Pacific with a Song

Connecting Our Childhood Hearts

“That song touches my childhood heart.” Yoshie Morrissey when hearing the song Blue-Eyed Doll in 2006.

General Theme for Symposium: Music is a universal language that bridges the Pacific. All across Japan and the United States people carry a long-forgotten song that was etched into their childhood memories. The song is usually buried so deeply that those who carry it often are not even aware that it is there. Upon hearing the distinctive melody, however, a flood of childhood emotion and memory often bursts forth along with tears of happiness.

Most of those who know the song do not know who wrote it or its history. The song dates from a time when relations between Japan and the United States were deteriorating and was written by a man who knew that the path to peace passed directly through a child’s heart.

Ann Lydon and the Blue-Eyed Doll Song – September 2005, Minamiboso, Japan

Ann Lydon and her husband Sandy were co-leaders of a group of Americans visiting Minamiboso, Japan in September 2005. One morning the group was gathered in the lobby of the Awa Prefectural Museum listening to a presentation about the blue-eyed dolls and examining several of the dolls that were on exhibition there. At the conclusion of the talk, several Japanese women gathered in the lobby began singing the Blue-eyed Doll Song, and Ann, without even realizing it, began to sing the Japanese song along with them. All of the Americans (including her husband), watched with amazement as this tall, blonde woman, smiling woman sang and hummed her way to the end of the song. “How do you know that song?” everyone asked at once. Ann explained that she and her brother had attended Japanese School while growing up in Sacramento, and the song had remained in her memory until it was called forth in the museum lobby over 40 years later. Since returning to the United States we have been calling forth the song from the memories of people who learned the song on both sides of the Pacific.

From that moment in the Awa Museum grew the idea to continue the legacies of Ujo Noguchi and Dr. Sidney Gulick by teaching a whole new generation about the Blue-Eyed Dolls.

Ujo Noguchi (1882-1945)

Ujo Noguchi was a famous Japanese poet and songwriter who specialized in songs, poems and nursery rhymes for children. Growing increasingly concerned about the relations between the United States and Japan, in 1921 he wrote the lyrics for a sad song about a doll that arrives in Japan alone and in need of friendship. The lyrics were put to a melody by Nagayo Motoori, and by the mid-1920s, the song was being sung by children all over Japan.

Noguchi and Motoori also published a similar song in 1921 about a young girl who leaves Japan to live in a foreign land. Titled Red Shoes because of the shoes that the girl wore, this song touches on the theme of separation that a Japanese child would feel after emigrating to Japan.

Both songs were extremely popular with Japanese school children prior to World War II and continue to be taught in elementary schools.

The Blue-eyed Doll Song Lyrics

The plastic blue-eyed doll from America…
How she cried when she arrived in Japan.

“I don’t understand the language…
Whatever will I do if I get lost…?”
Sweet little Japanese girl…play with her
Make her feel at home.

The Red Shoes Lyrics

The girl wearing red shoes
Was taken away…far away

She boarded a ship at Yokohama Harbor
And was taken far away

Her eyes must be blue now,
Living for so long in that foreign land.

I think of her whenever I see red shoes…
I think of her whenever I see a foreigner…

Lyrics from Best-Loved Children’s Songs from Japan translations by Dianne Ooka and illustrations by Yoko Imoto, 1986, published by Heian International, Inc., Torrance, CA.

The Friendship Dolls and Dr. Sidney Gulick (1860-1945)

Meanwhile, in the United States, another man was growing increasingly concerned about relations between his country and Japan. Dr. Sidney Gulick had been a missionary in Japan for 25 years and was fluent in that country’s language and customs. Ill health forced him to return to the United States in 1913, but as he recuperated he watched with alarm the passage of a series of anti-Japanese laws including the 1924 immigration law that effectively ended Japanese immigration. Gulick understood the difficulty of changing the minds of adults, so in 1926 he formed the Committee on World Friendship Among Children. That organization’s main project focused on sending American dolls to Japan in time for the traditional Japanese doll festival (O Hina Matsuri) to be held on March 3, 1927.

Dr. Gulick’s project captured the imagination of teachers and children across the United States. Dolls were donated from all corners of the country, and each was given a symbolic passport, a steamship ticket and hand written letters from American children. Five steamship companies donated space for the dolls and an astonishing 12,739 dolls were shipped to Japan where they received a warm welcome and were distributed to school through the country.

Though many of the dolls sent to Japan had other than blue eyes, Japanese school children quickly connected Dr. Gulick’s friendship dolls with the song, and the two have been intertwined ever since.

Was there any connection between Noguchi’s song and Dr. Gulick’s Friendship Doll effort? Professor Sandra C. Taylor, University of Utah, wrote the definitive biography of Dr. Sidney Gulick in 1984. Titled, Advocate of Understanding: Sidney Gulick and the Search for Peace with Japan, the book provides a detailed background of Dr. Gulick’s lifelong efforts to improve relations between Japan and the United States. However, there was no indication in the book that Gulick’s 1927 effort was inspired by Noguchi’s 1921 song.

In an e-mail exchange with now-retired Professor Taylor in December 2005, when asked if she thought that Gulick might have been inspired by Noguchi’s song, she wrote, “I doubt that the song prompted him to send the dolls.”

It would seem that the two men initiated their efforts separately, and that the song and dolls became connected by a magical coincidence.

The Japanese Response – The Return Gift Dolls, Fall 1927

As is their custom, the Japanese children immediately wanted to respond to the American dolls by sending Japanese dolls back to America. Under the leadership of Eiichi Shibusawa and the Japan International Children’s Friendship Association began a furious effort to raise funds for some Japanese dolls to arrive in the United States by Christmas. Japanese school children raised funds and traditional Japanese puppet craftsmen were employed to build 58 large dolls (each doll was 32 inches tall) that were then dressed in traditional costumes and placed in special chests to shipping. These dolls too carried Japanese passport, and were sponsored by the six largest Japanese cities and all of Japan’s prefectures. In September 1927 the dolls disembarked from Yokohama in a public ceremony.

The Japanese Friendship Dolls arrived in San Francisco on November 25, 1927 and a welcoming ceremony as held at a Japanese school in that city two days later. The dolls then went on tour across the country before being distributed to every state in the union.

Casualties of War – The Dolls and World War II

With the beginning of the war, the dolls became symbols of “the enemy” on both sides of the Pacific. In Japan, the military authorities outlawed the dolls and demanded that they be destroyed. The vast majority of the American dolls were destroyed as ordered. However, all across Japan there brave parents and teachers defied the order and hid the dolls away or buried them for safekeeping, in hopes that there would be a future time when the dolls could resume their work as ambassadors of peace and good will.

In the United States, though there was no official government mandate, the Japanese dolls quietly disappeared.

The Current Status of the Dolls - 2006

Over the 60 years since the war’s end, the surviving dolls on both sides of the Pacific have re-emerged to resume their important work. So far, 44 of the 58 Japanese dolls that went to the United States in 1927 have been located. At this writing an estimated 300 of Dr. Gulick’s dolls have resurfaced in Japan, and since the late 1990s there have been numerous exhibitions of the surviving dolls throughout the country. Now, with the power of the Internet, school children in both countries have been communicating with each other about the dolls.

Continuing the Legacies of Noguchi and Gulick

The visions of Ujo Noguchi and Dr. Sidney Gulick survived the passage of time and the fires of war. The two men understood that the path to peace and understanding is through the heart of a child.

Thus it is in their memory and for all the childhood hearts around the Pacific that we will be performing the songs of Ujo Noguchi at the Convergence 2006 Symposium in Monterey, California on Saturday evening, April 29, 2006.

Come join us and let Noguchi touch your childhood heart.

Kodomo no tame ni. For the sake of the children.

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