Explore everyday life in Japan
A thousand years ago, men and women in Japan are thought to have consulted a shaman-like person in March and have all the disasters and misfortunes (including illnesses) of the coming year transferred to handmade dolls and vegetables in an exorcism ceremony. These items were then thrown in either a nearby river or the sea where they, and the misfortunes they carried were swept away by the water’s currents.
It is also thought that, during this time period, aristocratic children had a custom of making dolls out of paper and other household goods and using them to play house. Over time, it seems that the exorcism ritual mentioned above merged with the use of children’s dolls and turned into an annual holiday known as Hina Matsuri. This holiday has been observed in Japan on March 3 for approximately six hundred years.
Hina Matsuri, which is sometimes called the doll festival in English, is still loosely connected to the exorcism ritual from which it began. However, beginning in the Edo Period (early 1600’s), a time that was known as being a peaceful time, this holiday developed into a day dedicated specifically to praying for the health, happiness, and good fortune of girls.
As people prospered during the Edo Period, it seems that the custom of giving Hina dolls to young girls during their first year of life gradually spread from the aristocracy to the common people. As this practice became more common, the dolls that were made to celebrate this holiday became more elaborate and ornate. Their values increased, and with their increase in value, the custom of washing Hina dolls away in rivers and the sea slowly disappeared.
Though I wonder how many people actually realize this today, the purpose of Hina dolls is to essentially be a body double for the young girls who own them. Every year, some time between the middle and end of February, these dolls are brought out of storage, decorated, and displayed in houses until the first or second week of March. They are then put back into storage for another year. During the time that they are on display, Hina dolls are meant to absorb the misfortunes that await their owners in the coming year and carry them into storage. Thus, assuring the health and happiness of the girls they protect.
Though it is not universally practiced in Japan, a widely held custom is for the grandparents on the mother’s side of the family to buy a Hina doll for their granddaughters before their granddaughters' first birthday. Like many specialty goods in Japan, these dolls are not cheap. Generally, they cost somewhere between $400 and $1,000 (USD). However, depending on their quality and the materials that they are made of, Hina dolls can sometimes cost well over $1,000.
While not all families can afford to buy Hina dolls for their daughters or granddaughters, most everyone can find a way to celebrate this holiday through food. There are a variety of traditional dishes that are eaten in Japan on Hina Matsuri, from chirashizushi, a kind of salad made with vinegared rice, sushi, vegetables, and thinly sliced scrambled eggs to clam-stock soups, Hina-arare (a sweet rice cracker snack), and sakura flavored mochi.
Whatever the dish, the colors of the ingredients will most likely be a mix of pastel green, pink, white, and yellow. These colors are thought to represent the four seasons of the year and, along with the ingredients that are used in these various dishes, are meant to ensure good health, happiness, longevity, and a good marriage throughout the year to come and beyond.
This is an ongoing series that will explore various aspects of daily life in Japan. My hope is that this series will not only reveal to its followers, image by image, what Japan looks like, but that it will also inform its followers about unique Japanese items and various cultural and societal practices. If you are interested in getting regular updates about life in Japan, please consider following me at @boxcarblue. If you have any questions about life in Japan, please don’t hesitate to ask. I will do my best to answer all of your questions.