The Okiku Doll

The Okiku doll is a traditional Japanese girl doll, about 40 cm tall, in a kimono, of the ichimatsu type that was a common gift for children in the early 20th century. Since 1938 it has been kept at Mannenji, a Pure Land Buddhist temple in the Kurisawa district of Iwamizawa in central Hokkaido. Its fame rests on one claim: that the doll’s hair, once cut in a short okappa bob, has grown down past its shoulders.

The story as it is usually told begins in 1918, when a 17-year-old named Eikichi Suzuki visited Sapporo for a large exhibition and bought the doll on Tanukikoji, the city’s shopping arcade, as a present for his little sister Kikuko, then two or three years old. She adored it, but died a short time later – of a sudden cold in the oldest versions, of the influenza pandemic in others; even the year differs between tellings. The family placed the doll beside her ashes on the household Buddhist altar, and later came to believe that its hair was lengthening and that Kikuko’s spirit had settled in it.

In 1938 the Suzukis moved to Karafuto (southern Sakhalin) and entrusted the doll to Mannenji. After the war, Eikichi asked the temple to keep it permanently and hold memorial services for his sister. Asking a temple to care for a doll in this way reflects a real and widespread Japanese practice: dolls that were loved by someone who has died are often given memorial rites (ningyō kuyō) rather than thrown away. Mannenji keeps the Okiku doll in that spirit, as an object of mourning and prayer.

By the late 20th century the doll had become a national sensation through television ghost specials and weekly magazines. A 2021 folklore study by Akari Narumi, surveying Japanese stories of uncanny dolls, lists magazine coverage of the Okiku doll from 1990 onward, including reports that its face had grown more grown-up and its mouth was opening, and a 2015 report that it had been withdrawn from public display because of deterioration. Stories that a scientist confirmed the hair is a child’s are repeated online but have never been traced to a published examination.

The hair is said to have grown from a short bob to past the shoulders, and to grow back after being trimmed by the temple. Magazine stories over the decades have added claims that the doll’s expression changes, that its face has matured and that its lips are parting. No measurement over time has been published.

The doll is kept in a display case at Mannenji temple in Kurisawa, Iwamizawa, in farm country east of Sapporo.

The Okiku doll is Japan’s most famous haunted doll and a staple of TV specials, ghost books and the Japanese tradition of kaidan storytelling; it inspired many later tales of dolls with growing hair. It also illustrates the living custom of ningyō kuyō, in which temples hold memorial services for dolls that families cannot bear to discard.