The Doll Festival

AKA: Girls, You'd Best Get Hitched (And Quick).

The 3rd of March is the celebrated "Hina Matsuri" here - this can be translated as "Doll Festival" or "Girls Festival." From late January on, huge doll displays start appearing everywhere. These displays feature an emperor and and an empress, both in traditional Japanese court attire from the Heian period (aka: 12 layers of kimono!), and their attendants, belongings, etc, all on display stands. The more accessories with the doll, and the more elaborate the doll's clothing are, the more expensive the doll set is; I've seen some priced at a couple of thousand of dollars, and that was just at a mall. Mothers pass on sets to their daughters, so personal collections can get quite elaborate over the years.

The displays stay up for months, drawing in and trapping bad spirits, thus protecting the girls of the household. Then, exactly on the 3rd, the dolls are quickly packed away, because, as legend has it, the longer the dolls are up, the longer it will be before the girl gets married.


Outside of this last superstition (and the general "you'd best get married" sentimentality Japan seems to have), I have rather enjoyed the festival. The dolls are truly beautiful; I bought a set for myself (a VERY small one of just the Emperor and the Empress which still cost me $30) for displaying in the future. Still, my best experience was going to the prefectural capital and seeing a display of Japanese wooden dolls, called "kokeshi," in honor of the festival.

Kokeshi are, at their simplest, wooden spheres on top of wooden cylinders with painted faces and kimonos. However, over the years, these dolls have become more and more elaborate. Modern kokeshi, a set of kokeshi that break the strict, traditional rules of kokeshi making, can be very elaborate and wonderfully beautiful.

It took me less than half an hour to see all of the dolls on display, which was somewhat depressing considering I had traveled some four times that long in order to get there. Still, it was very much worth going, as the displays were gorgeous and invited longer investigation. Themes ranged from nature to culture, and one pair even featured a US Naval officer standing next to a Japanese soldier, a touchy theme at best due to continued US occupation in places like Okinawa and Yokohama. It was an interesting view of culture across the boards.


I also had the opportunity to paint my own doll for a mere 500 yen, something that I started and was unable to finish due to time constraints but am excited about working on in the near future.

In short, though know every culture has its lingering bits of "marry 'em off quick" celebration, and though I know that the Hina Matsuri is much more than this sentimentality, the holiday leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. While I'm not a rabid feminist by any means, I can't help but wonder how many times these girls get the message "marry soon, or else" ... and how many more listen.