From the 1959 New Cookbook, published by the Japan Cookery School (日本割烹学校)

"Doll salad: Arrange ham like a dress around a core of potato salad." Easy. Nutritious. Doubles as set dressing for movies about cannibal hillbilly clans.

The JCS was an Osaka-based operation run by TSUJI Tokumitsu and catering mostly to students and housewives. As I understand it, it was a direct ancestor to Tsuji Gakuen, and an indirect ancestor to the tsujicho empire: tsujicho was founded by TSUJI Shizuo, a reporter who fell in love with Tokumitsu's daughter Katsuko while visiting the JCS on assignment and married into the family business a few months later. Aww.