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.
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.
With this in mind, 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. Aside from the exquisite dolls-in-kimono displayed in glass cases only at the end of winter, none of the dolls in Japan looked Asian. Barbie wasn’t popular. She was probably too sexy for Japan.