Adventures of a Japanese
Doll
by Henry Mayer
1901, Grant Richards, London
This book is hardbound, measures
about 24 x 32 cm, and consists of 64 single-sided pages, numbered however
1-128. Each printed opening consists of a full-page color image on one
page, and a section of text on the facing page. The text is quite full,
and divided into chapters.
Thanks for the images of this book to the Baldwin
Collection of the University of Florida Libraries, which is engaged
in its own project to put historical
children's literature online.
The story is somewhat like
Collodi's Pinocchio in that the doll remains doll-like while having
many adventures among human beings, in which she acts, feels, speaks, and
is treated as if she were actually a little girl, insofar as little girls
get to ride on storks' backs. As with Pinocchio, the scene of the doll's
creation is presented, and her early life involves some discipline and
warnings. However, Mayer's heroine has no need or desire to be a "real
girl" and ends up quite happy as a Japanese doll.
The plot is roughly this:
The Japanese dollmaker Chung Wa makes the doll Ting-a-Ling, and his daughters
dress her and teach her to dance. However, the Japanese chin dogs are jealous
of the attention shown to the doll. Ting-a-Ling dreams of travel, though
she dearly loves the Nodding Mandarin in the doll-shop window, and her
chance comes one day when one of the dogs slips the noose of a balloon
over her neck and she is borne away through the air. She comes down when
a (German) stork pops her balloon; however, he rescues her and becomes
her vehicle and guide in a world tour that includes Egypt, darker Africa,
the American West, a visit to the Esquimos, and sojourns in Switzerland,
Italy, Holland, France, and Scotland. She generally joins in the fun wherever
she is, whether guarding Swiss mountain passes, lassoing buffalo, or being
Queen of Mardi Gras in Venice. Finally, in Chelsea, Ting-a-Ling spots the
Nodding Mandarin in a Curiosity Shop; the owner literally picks her up
off the street and puts her in the shop window next to the mandarin, but
the stork seizes them and takes them both back to Chung Wa's shop in Japan.
There are several "problems"
with this narrative: Chung Wa, Ting-a-Ling, and the other "Japanese" names
are Chinese. Ting-a-Ling is a girl, but she is depicted as a boy doll and
in fact worries about her bald head when in Switzerland--she almost wishes
she ahad "a wig of golden curls" so she would fit in better. The Nodding
Mandarin is not a Japanese doll, but a Chinese figure, Japanese shops do
not have glass window displays, and so on.
However, it would be churlish
not to enjoy such a richly conceived and illustrated book. However shaky
his grasp of Japanese life and customs, the author obviously enjoyed depicting
a Japanese doll in many guises and situations, and ranging freely between
the image of a child and the doll-ness of Ting-a-Ling--showing a joint
here and there, or letting a limb flop at a doll-like angle, to remind
us that this is not a girl he is drawing, but a doll.
Click on the images below
to see a moderately-sized scan of the full-page illustration. (These are
not all the images, only about half!)
