Schattschneider teaches Anthropology at Brandeis University in Waltham,
Massachusetts, USA. This
year (2003-04) she is a Fulbright research scholar,
based in Hirosaki,
Japan. She is currently writing, “Facing
the Dead: Japan and its Dolls in the Mirror of
War.”
Introduction
I
am seeking the help of Pacific Wrecks readers as
I research the history of the small figures known as “mascot
dolls”(masukotto ningyo) or “keepsake dolls” (imon
ningyo) during the Asia-Pacific war. Many thousands of these dolls
were made by women in Japan from the late 1930s (perhaps earlier)
until August 1945, and given to servicemen in the Imperial Japanese
Army and Imperial Japanese Navy. Initially, these small cloth dolls,
nearly always depicting a female figure, were sent to soldiers
serving in China. They became especially popular during 1944-45,
when many
tokkotai (“kamikaze”) carried the dolls on their
final missions.
My
interest in these dolls developed out my research as a cultural
anthropologist on special ceremonies in present-day
northeastern
Japan, in which the soul of a person who has died unmarried
is married, in effect, to a beautiful bride doll (hanayome ningyo).
This practice
apparently developed soon after the war, as families grieved
for young men who died in battle. (Thousands of bride dolls have
been
dedicated at temples and religious sites in far northern Honshu,
and hundreds more have been dedicated by families to soldiers
at Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo.) I began to wonder if the giving
of “mascot
dolls” during the war to soldiers may have contributed
to the rise of this special way of remembering and honoring
loved ones who
died in military service.
The Idea of “Mascots” (Masukotto)
The mascot dolls themselves may have developed, in part, from
the amulets (omamori) carried by samurai in earlier years.
This appears
to be an example of the widespread belief in Japan that dolls
have a kind of soul (“tamashi”) and can carry the
identity or essence of a person who has made or owned them.
Interestingly,
the word “mascot” comes from the old provincial
French word “mascotte” (lucky charm) made popular
by the 1880 French opera, “La Mascotte,” which
was performed in Paris, London, and eventually in Tokyo. By
the early 20th century, the term “masukotto” in
Japan came to be used for small dolls or objects given to bring
luck to people; I am not sure exactly when the dolls began
to sent to
soldiers at the front.
Mascot Dolls and the War
From c. 1936–1945, Japanese women’s
and girls’ magazines often featured instructions on how
to make these small dolls for soldiers. Mothers made them
for
their sons,
sisters for their brothers, wives for their husbands, and
girlfriends for their boyfriends. In many cases, home economics
teachers
instructed their students in how to make the dolls, which
would be sent to
serving soldiers in various theatres of war.
The dolls
often were made of scraps of kimono or other spare items of cloth.
Sometimes the dolls wore dresses, and often
they wore the
monpe trousers favored by many women on the home front
during the war. Sometimes the dolls depicted komori (nursemaids),
holding a
tiny baby. Often, the name and address (or school) of
the woman who made the doll was appended to it, on a strip of paper.
The dolls
were often included in the imonbukuro (the keepsake or
care
bags) sent by women and families to soldiers on the front,
along with
items of clothing, postcards, and so forth.
The Dolls and
the Tokkotai
I am especially fascinated by the use of these
mascot dolls by tokkotai / kamikaze. A number of surviving former tokkotai
have
told me that they received
many of these dolls and that they carried them on their
bodies, usually hanging from cords around their necks
or
their hips.
Most of the
time, when official photographs were taken, the soldiers
would place the dolls under their uniforms; but I have
come across
at least twenty
photographs of tokkotai in which the dolls are clearly
visible. Many people have told me that the dolls were
given to keep
the tokkotai
company during their terribly lonely final journeys.
In some cases, I have been told, mothers, sisters, and lovers
wanted
to “be
with” the pilot during his final moments, and that
the dolls allowed this special closeness.
The Fate of
the Dolls
Most of these dolls were of course destroyed
during the war, but a few have survived. In some cases, tokkotai/kamikaze
gave one
of their mascot dolls to relatives or friends, as “katami” (remembrances),
just before their final mission. Such dolls are displayed
in a number of Japanese museums, including the Yushukan
military history museum
at Yasukuni (Tokyo) and in the Chiran Peace Museum, the
Kanoya naval aviation museum, and the Kaseda Peace Museum
in Kagoshima (southern
Kyushu). One mascot doll, given by its IJN owner to family
members soon before he died in action in a kaiten (special
attack submarine
or “human torpedo”) is now on display at
the Kaiten museum in Yamaguchi Prefecture. Remarkably,
this
doll has recently
been
traced back to the woman who made it as a teenage girl
during the war. I recently had a long talk with her
and she recalls
making
such dolls with her mother in 1944 and 1945.
I also recently
spoke with a group of women (in the organization “Nadeshikokai”)
who as high school students helped take care of young
tokkotai pilots stationed in Chiran in 1945. In some
cases, they
explained, a pilot
would ask a girl to make him a special mascot doll.
One woman recalled a pilot in April 1945 asking her
to make
him two
dolls, one for
him and one for his airplane. Some kamikaze pilots,
she explained, would
hang a doll from their instrument panel, and talk to
it in flight. Looking into the faces of the dolls,
she said,
they
would see the
faces of their mothers, their sisters, their wives…
I
have been told repeatedly that a number of dolls were
recovered by Allied navy personnel from the remains
of tokkotai/kamikaze
pilots, within the wreckage of their aircraft. But
I have not been able to
document this.
I would be deeply grateful for any information
that sheds more light on the story of these dolls, the women who
made them,
and the men
who carried them into battle.
