Barbie in Japan

I loved playing with Barbie dolls. As a little girl in Michigan, I spent hours putting my dolls through dramas, creating stories alone in my room, or in tandem with my best friend who lived next door. My first Barbie was conventional with blonde hair and hard plastic legs. Later, I acquired Malibu Barbie and Ken, a Black nurse Barbie, modelled after the TV character Julia played by Diahann Carol, and a Miss America Barbie.

Although I have no memory of wanting to look like a Barbie doll – or like any other of my dolls which had thicker waists and flatter feet – I gradually absorbed the culturally prevalent idea that little girls should have dolls that looked like them. I grew up and came to Japan to teach English. One day, at a kindergarten, I was surprised to see that there were no dolls with Japanese features in the classroom. The only dolls in Japan that looked Asian were the exquisite dolls-in-kimono that were displayed in glass cases only at the end of winter. Barbie wasn’t popular in Japan; she was probably too sexy. However, there were two fashion dolls – Jenny, who came with a kimono, and Licca-chan. According to her back story, Licca-chan had blonde hair and was biracial, with a French musician father and a Japanese designer mother. Licca-chan was eleven years old – too young to be a doctor or the president or to have a boyfriend.

I married a Japanese high school teacher and had a daughter of my own. My daughter amassed a collection of Barbies even though they were not sold in toy stores. I bought dolls for her. She was gifted dollsfor Christmas, birthdays, and Children’s Day. Her collection grew each time we visited my family in South Carolina. Because my daughter is deaf, I made sure she got a Sign Language Barbie. Because she has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair, I ordered a Barbie with a wheelchair for her. I also made sure she had dolls with Asian features. She played with the Barbies, but she also practiced developing her fine motor skills in occupational therapy sessions by dressing and undressing Barbie dolls.

Now, my daughter is grown and living apart from her father and me. She came home for the summer Obon holidays. I suggested that we go see “Barbie,” which debuted in Japan on August 11. I had kept up with the hype online, and I was looking forward to a girlie, nostalgic experience with her.

My daughter made a face. She had seen a “Barbieheimer” graphic online – an image of Barbie and Ken backed by a mushroom cloud in the distance. Just two days before my suggestion to see Barbie, Japan had -observed the 78th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, when around 35,000 people were killed. [The first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, leading to the deaths of at least 140,000.] The joint promotion of the “Barbie” movie and “Oppenheimer,” which has not been released in Japan, was regarded in poor taste and did not go over well.

Nevertheless, I convinced my daughter to go to the movie with me, explaining that Barbie had nothing to do with the creator of the atomic bomb. Dressed in pink, we made our way to the theater lobby where there wasn’t a single Barbie poster on display. A dubbed version of the movie was scheduled for three showings a day. When we entered the theater at six p.m. on a Friday, opening day, for the English-language version, only about ten other people were in the screening room.

Ultimately, the “Barbie” movie was a non-event in Japan. There was no pink photo box. No other viewers dressed in pink. And while I enjoyed the movie, I realized that most of the humor flew past my daughter. Nevertheless, I was happy to share this bit of my culture and this throwback to my childhood with her. She did perk up whenever a Barbie in a wheelchair appeared onscreen. And later, she posted on Instagram that the film had brought back memories of playing with her dolls.