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Miss Akita is by the artist Takizawa Kōryūsai II. Her personal name is Akita Fukiko and her kimono crest is the tachi omodaka (water plantain).
She was part of a larger group of nine dolls that travelled throughout Ohio and Michigan in the winter of 1928, before being placed at the Detroit Children’s Museum in late July of that year.
Miss Akita returned to Japan in 1988 to be part of the important exhibition of 19 Friendship Dolls and 34 of the “blue-eyed” Doll Messengers of Goodwill organized by the Kokusai Bunka Kyōkai (Japanese International Culture Association), Sogo Department Store and the Asahi Shimbun newspaper in Tokyo. Using Sogo Department Stores as the venue, from April to September, this exhibition visited ten different locations: Yokohama, Hiroshima, Tokushima, Kobe, Sapporo, Matsuyama and several locations in the greater Tokyo area, including Chiba, Hachioji, Kashiwa and Omiya.
She retains a nearly complete set of accessories bearing the maru ni tachi aoi (encircled hollyhock crest), including her ship ticket and passport. In addition, many of the original letters sent by the children of Akita Prefecture also remain with her in the collection of the Detroit Children’s Museum.
Through archival photographs, she has been identified as the original Miss Ishikawa.