History of KiMeKomi Ningyo

When you see the exquisite dolls that Japanese families display on Girls Day (March 3rd) or Boys day (May 5th), you are looking at KiMeKomi Ningyo.

Between 1736 and 1740, workmen who made the offering boxes for Kami Kamo Shrine in Kyoto started to use the left-over pieces of Japanese Cyprus wood to carve dolls for children. As things like this often happen, they were unwittingly beginning one of Japan's great artistic traditions. Soon, the workmen were using scraps of cloth for clothes and adding details to the dolls. Eventually, the dolls attracted the attention of the court nobility and their ladies, the taste-makers and trend-setters of the day, who began collecting the dolls. Ki Me Komi Ningyo became the most sought-after dolls in a country that loves and treasures its dolls.

Kazuko Adams, like many Japanese, has loved dolls since her childhood. She remembers the blue-eyed dolls that arrived as gifts from Americans after the devastation of World War II and brightened her childhood in Kyoto. Unknown to her at the time, Japanese responded to the American gift by presenting the Americans with their own precioius Japanese dolls, Ki Me Komi Ningyo, as a sign of friendship. Today, Kazuko Adams can easily claim to be the only maker of Ki Me Komi Ningyo in Brazos County, Texas, and she is happy to continue the wonderful tradition of cultural exchange between the United States and Japan.