How about having their Happy Doll travel to places where children and patients cannot get out of the hospital?

 

Happy Dolls, which were made with their wish inside, visit other hospitals, make many friends, and come back after one year together with various stories.

 

Hearts of people who made Happy Dolls get connected, hospitals get connected and make a network of those who fight disease… if this comes true, wouldn’t hospitals be more comfortable and warmer places?

At one hospital which we visited as a part of Hospital Art, I found a child who was looking out of the window. Looking at his sad face, I was thinking of such a thing.

 

Since then, I spent a year further developing the plan and making preparations, and I started the project “Happy Doll” in 2006.

At that time, I was planning to visit 13 hospitals, hold 14 exhibits inside those hospitals, and finish up everything in one year.

As the project went on, however, it was obvious that I couldn’t finish in just one year.

 

“I’ve gained power to live.” “It’s great that we relay our feelings!” “When are you coming next?” These moving words were sent to me, and they made me continue with this project.

 

The first year ended like this, and when it came time to send back the Happy Dolls to their home hospitals, it suddenly came to me.

“That’s right! I will make a book for ‘producers’ of Happy Dolls to show which places their Happy Dolls travelled around, what kind of people they met, and how they increased Happy Doll friends, etc.” In this way, the project continued to travel to various hospitals throughout Japan. At each venue, their own program and exhibit were held, and then they were sent to the next hospital.

 

Toward the end of the year, we quickly made a record of this project, and around the Christmas season, we sent out this book to the original hospitals, returning their Happy Dolls at the same time.

 

In 2010, I flew to New York in order to link Japanese hospitals with children’s hospitals and children who are fighting with cancer in the U.S. Consequently, our network expanded across the border. At the Christmas season that year, the Happy Dolls that were born at many hospitals throughout Japan and those from New York proudly decorated the Wako show window in the Ginza. The Happy Dolls made by the patients who usually silently fight against their diseases in hospitals and other Dolls made by my friends who have already passed away were there in the center of the gorgeous street corner, communicating with people who come and go in front of them.

 

I was truly moved to see this scene.

 

In 2011, the fifth year of our project, the Great East Japan Earthquake occurred. Just standing by the disastrous scene, I couldn’t stop my tears. I soon started the Happy Doll project at the evacuation facilities. Since then, responding to changing situations, we held this project at temporary housing, reconstructed apartments, etc. We traveled around three prefectures in four and a half years. Our project is now embedded in each region as a project which cheers up people’s hearts and supports rebirth of communities.

 

Last year, we again crossed the border and visited South Africa, where our program was on hold due to earthquakes. We visited two children’s hospitals and two children’s facilities and conducted Happy Doll projects with those children who were living with various hardships such as AIDS, poverty, sexual harassment, and domestic violence. These children were eager for chances to make things; they therefore continued to make things with enormous power, as if dry land was absorbing water.

 

And this year, the Happy Doll project has come into its tenth year. We visited many hospitals throughout Japan and abroad, made Happy Dolls, cried, laughed, were moved, etc. Looking back, it was like an obstacle course, but yet it was repetition of a precious encounter. It was a ten-year dream. Happy Dolls will continue to travel, connecting the places which face life.