The University of Nebraska State Museum will celebrate the 88th anniversary of Miss Mie, a Japanese friendship doll, during a Dec. 12 event.
Designed for children and families, the event is 10 a.m. to noon in Morrill Hall. Regular admission to the museum will apply.
In partnership with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Kawasaki Reading Room and the UNL student organization Global Friends of Japan, the museum will have Miss Mie and her accessories, including a new peace cap in honor of her birthday, on temporary display in Morrill Hall. Special activities include paper folding art with origami artist Linda Stephen, Japanese calligraphy with the Global Friends of Japan and a paper doll activity to learn more about the traditional dress and accessories of Miss Mie. The birthday celebration will be highlighted at 11 a.m. with refreshments and remarks from Susan Weller, NU State Museum director.
The Miss Mie exhibit will be on display from Dec. 4 through Jan. 4. Visitors are encouraged to add notes to the museum’s writing prompt activity “Friendship is ….” The notes will be sent to partner institution Mie Prefecture Japan at the close of the exhibit.
Miss Mie has been in the museum’s anthropology collections since 1928. The doll first arrived in the United States from Japan in 1927 when 58 friendship dolls were sent to the 48 states as gifts to American children as a gesture of goodwill in exchange for the American Blue Eyed Dolls given to the children of Japan in 1926. Small groups of these “goodwill ambassadors” traveled to 479 cities throughout the country that year. After the tour, some of the dolls found homes in museums and other institutions throughout the United States, including the NU State Museum. In 2009, Miss Mie and her accessories were transported to Mie Prefecture in south-central Japan. Masaru Aoki, expert doll conservator from the historic Yoshitoku Co. in Tokyo, performed much-needed conservation work on the doll. After the repairs, Miss Mie was the center of several events in Japan before returning to the museum’s anthropology collection in 2010.
For more information, go to http://www.museum.unl.edu.
