Looking for Stories and Context for a Photo of My Grandfather and the Blue-Eyed Dolls of 1927

Abstract In 1927, during a period of tense relations between the United States and Japan, former missionary Sydney Gulick launched a cross-cultural goodwill campaign that involved sending 12,739 “friendship dolls” from American schoolchildren to Japan. The arrival of these “blue-eyed dolls” prompted the reciprocal exchange of 58 traditional Japanese “dolls of gratitude” to the States. A rare historical photograph—of unknown provenance—depicting the local reception of some of these American dolls among elementary school principals in Saitama is the subject of both a personal mediation as well as historical scrutiny in order to fill in the blank spots of its origin.