Postcards
--were not just postcards in the late 19th and early 20th century. They might be used as Christmas, Birthday, and Valentine's cards, or for any of the other purposes (such as declaration of love, sentimental supportiveness, etc.) for which we now use greeting cards. Very pretty cards might be used by schoolteachers as a "reward of merit." Sometimes photographers would make up postcards of the new baby, the family, etc. to be mailed to relatives. And then there is the genre of risqué postcards, which were undoubtedly collected for their own sake, with cheesecake images and/or naughty jokes.
The images on this page illustrate Japanese dolls in a variety of situations, on postcards with a variety of purposes: sentimental, humorous, pious. On separate pages I have arranged images which are meant to evoke a Japanese setting, and Christmas cards with Japanese dolls. I have also separated out cards that present Multicultural doll families.Click on the small picture to see the entire postcard image.
postcard, 189-, US; Rotary co. publishers
Sepia Victorian card. Two images of little girls, plus flowers and a Japanese doll, with a verse. At least one other card was issued with similar design and doll.
1890, US, pub. W. Hagelberg
The picture here links to a fancy card awarded in 1909 as a school prize. However, there is a larger version which was available as a lithograph, and other postcard variations. The full image was called Rival Mothers and showed 5 little girls; I have also seen a version with only the main group of three girls. These three girls, admiring a cat dressed up as a baby, are dressed in the quaintest of 18th-century costumes, frilly caps and all. The Japanese girl seems to be an addition, looking over the other girls' shoulders and holding her doll high as if to say, "I have a baby too!" The fifth girl, in the large version, is a little black girl with a rag doll made of an old dishtowel tied with string; she is even more excluded than the Japanese girl, standing aside and looking frightened and upset. Both the Japanese girl and the black child seem to be anachronisms with respect to the central group. However, the print must have been treasured by its former owners, since it was elaborately matted.
postcard, 1900?, Germany/French
"Souvenir d'amitié." Evidently a series of girls with giant baskets of flowers. She seems to be offering a peach to her boy ichimatsu. The girl and doll illustration were also used as the cover of a book, Dolly's Darlings, pub. by Raphael Tuck, so I assume that the card was also a Tuck publication.
postcard, 1904, Tuck "Art" series
Blonde girl holding parasol with butterflies, wearing kimono and updo, holding inauthentic-looking geisha ichimatsu.
postcard, 1900?, France? artist: Tucker; pub. M. M. Vienne
Two Japanese dolls watch as two kittens destroy a peg doll. Teacup in evidence. Pencil drawing.
postcard, 1909, Prince pub. co., Buffalo
"If you lak-a me, lak I lak-a you, You'll write-a me a letter." Inscribed on a Japanese fan, with lanterns and a doll-like figure at the side. The first two lines belong to a popular song from 1902 by Robert Cole, "Under the Bamboo Tree," in which they are spoken by "a Zulu from Matabooloo." (Judy Garland and Margaret O'Brien sing this song in the film Meet Me in St. Louis.)
postcard, 1910, US
Mailed Kansas. "I am missing the children." Man throwing balls at a set of dolls including at least one Japanese and 2 black ones. Other versions of this joke exist.
postcard, 1907,J. I. Austen co., Chicago
"I don't know why I love you but I do"--spoken to teddy bear, not the Japanese doll.
postcard, 1918, Italy (UK)
signed A. Zandrino
Mailed in wartime Europe to England.
postcard, 1910, US
Mary Sigsbecker; verse by Burges Johnson
Mailed Kansas. Girl reading a tract to a fine boy ichimatsu,
with poem explaining she has a duty to such a heathen. See the page on
poems
for Japanese dolls.
postcard, 1910?, Canada; artist: Graeff
Little Folks' Fancies: "...Little children saying grace /In every Christian kind of place." Jap doll, peg doll, Teddy, and stuffed animals are praying over a plate of cookies while other dolls sleep or "stand in corner." Chinese wallpaper dado.
Compare Ruth Hallock's illustration of a different poem of Stevenson's, Foreign Children.
Valentine greeting card, pub. Raphael Tuck 1890s?
The card, which is elaborately embossed and die cut, opens for an affectionate verse inside.
The same die-cut illustration, and another complementary one, were used in a pair of Crown Syrup advertisements. Similar cards by the same publisher were made with (secular) Christmas and New Year's greetings.
postcard, 1912, US
Mailed Jackson, Miss. "I wish I were the china cup/ From which you drink your tea. Then every time you take a sip, You'd give a kiss to me." Girl drinking tea with Japanese boy doll and blonde dolly; screen and pot of flowers behind, teddy bear on the floor.
postcard, U.K.
"See you tomorrow / Bonne nuit, vous verrai demain"--the English and French text means that this card was intended to sell on both sides of the English Channel. The child is adorable but apparently the artist did not have an authentic model for the doll--it does not seem to be Japanese, and yet it fills the function of a Japanese doll, a splash of color and a touch of the exotic,
postcard, 1911, US
Mailed in Cleveland. Boy looking at girl with Japanese girl doll "Pretty Little Miss, take this Heart of mine / And tell me I can always be zour own true Valentine." Doll is very stiff looking and has un-Japanese proportions.
artist: J. Zekulak (based on a similar card)
192-, mailed in Hungary
This postcard, showing a cartoonish little girl in kimono and Japanese hairdo, with a dog and a Japanese doll, shows a development of Western art influenced by Japanese woodblocks: the layering of flat swathes of patterns against empty spaces is what makes the design pleasing. The pattern of the doll's kimono suggests Japanese shibori cloth, too. However, the girl's shoes and proportions are very un-Japanese. The style is similar to that of Chloe Preston, a popular artist between the wars, among whose works is a book called "Peek-a-boo Japs." (new link!)
postcard, 1915?, Xavier Sager, France
Sexy girl curled up in pink undies on bed, with Japanese doll sitting on bed back to viewer (looking at her). Oddly, doll has yellow Mary Janes, perhaps to sugget a shoe fetish. Not mailed.
Xavier Sager was a prolific Parisian satirist and creator of naughty postcards.
postcard, ca. 1918, Xavier Sager, France
A sample of Sager's World War I patriotic cheesecake. Here the young woman has discarded a Japanese doll in favor of a soldier doll. A similar card shows the young lady holding up a soldier doll while a boy doll in civilian clothes lies on the floor. Presumably the Japanese doll is depicted here because it is a trendy and recognizable toy.
Postcard, Suzanne Meunier, 192-?
Not mailed. This image, like the one above, represents a prostitute, but in this case she seems to be artistically arranged as a package trip to the Orient: kimono, flowering branch emerging in Japanese style from an oriental pot, and the Japanese doll to finish off the picture. Her pose suggests a contemplative Buddha, but the silk stockings and marcelled hair invite one to contemplate her. Her gaze, however inviting, seems to reserve the right to a selfhood separate from her beauty and her accessories.
Unlike the young woman, the doll does not seem to have had a very distinctive model posing for her. The promportions are right but the face does not look much like a real Japanese doll, and the kimono looks more like a bathrobe than a proper Japanese outfit. This doll also appears to be wearing shoes.
For one more card showing a beautiful, glamorous young woman with a Japanese doll, see the Chiostri Christmas card.
