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Miss Chiba is by the artist Takizawa Kōryūsai II. Her kimono crest is the mokko (papaya).
Originally, Miss Chiba was part of the special seventeen-doll grouping that was selected to tour California before being sent cross country by train to be received at the National Theater in Washington D.C. on Christmas Day, 1927. While in Riverside, California she was part of a lavish display of the seventeen Friendship Dolls held at Frank Miller’s Mission Inn in early December 1927.
Frank Miller was a strong and influential supporter of Japanese-American relations and was, unusually, allowed to keep one of the dolls for his granddaughter’s international doll collection housed at the Mission Inn, which itself boasted a large, eclectic art collection and served as a de facto museum for the city. He selected Miss Chiba as well as one of the seven special companion dolls sent to accompany the six principal city dolls and Miss Japan.
These two dolls, Miss Chiba, and the companion doll they named “Miss Fusa” remained as part of the Mission Inn’s “Dolls and Animals of the World Collection” until the outbreak of World War II. After this their record falls silent.
When the Mission Inn was sold and the majority of its art collection auctioned off in 1957, there was no record of either doll.
Unfortunately, Miss Chiba and Miss Fusa remain among our list of missing dolls.