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Miss Saga is by the artist Takizawa Kōryūsai II. Her personal name is Nabeshima Hisako and her kimono crest is the agari fuji (climbing wisteria).
Miss Saga is, unfortunately, one of our missing dolls. She is listed as being placed in the Commercial Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1928. This museum, founded in 1899, was exceptionally important and influential during its day, but beginning in 1929 it entered a period of inexorable decline, morphing into the Civic Center Museum in 1955 before its ultimate closure and dispersal of material in 1994.
The only records remaining of Miss Saga’s presence in Philadelphia consist of a beautiful archival photograph preserved in the City Archives and anecdotal comments about her continued presence in the Civic Center Museum in the 1980s.
Through comparison of archival images, Philadelphia’s doll has been determined to be the original Miss Tokyo-fu. And the original Miss Saga, by Iwamura Shōkensai, is the doll now known as “Miss Yamaguchi,” which was originally placed in the Art Institute of Chicago before being transferred to the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico where she resides today.