The most distinctive Japanese dolls are probably the sets belonging to Japanese girls and kept for display on the Doll Festival, sometimes called Girls’ Day (March 3) . The two essential dolls are a hieratic male and female figure; these may be two-dimensional (folded paper tachibina or a picture of the dolls), or they may be a beautiful “Emperor and Empress” (the dairi-bina) attended, insofar as the young owners’ parents’ purses permit, by wise warriors, musicians, ladies serving sake, and other figures of aristocratic private life of the past, all arranged according to set patterns on the red steps of the hina-dan or tiered display.

What does it all mean? For many mothers and daughters today, the display in the home of these family treasures is a wish for marriage, and comes with a warning not to leave the display up for too long lest marriage be delayed. For wealthy people 200 years ago, it may have been simply having a bigger and better display than anyone else (laws were made to restrict the size of hina dolls). Through the entire history of the dolls, though, hina dolls seem to have been known for their ability to take away the troubles of those who treat the dolls properly.

The general word for the girls’ day dolls is hina (also ohina, “honored hina,” and the combination form -bina, as in tachibina, “standing hina,” or dairi-bina, the seated royal pair who feature in most displays). The word hina or hiina is similar to the word for “chick, baby bird” and is thought to have meant something like “little, pretty thing” when it came into use both for chicks and for girls’ dolls.

Celebrating Hina Matsuri

In anticipation of a newborn girl’s first Hina Matsuri, relatives will co-ordinate to see that she has at least the two main dolls in some format. New dolls are usually very expensive, and come in boxes designed for storage during 11 months of the year; they constitute an important gift. An older set belonging to a female relative may also be handed down in the family. The annual celebration in the home, with display of the dolls, will continue at least until the girl is 8 or 10, perhaps much longer, especially if her mother feels strongly about it.

• The Emperor and Empress (this is the way Americans have always identified the dairi-bina, and many Japanese as well)  sit at the top. They can also be referred to as obina (male hina) and mebina (female hina), or tono and hime (lord and princess), or O-dairi-sama and O-hina-sama; insofar as they represent the Emperor and Empress, they do not refer to the persons currently in those roles (with the exceptions of a very few pairs made in the Meiji era as portraits; see Alan Pate, “Japanese dolls and the Imperial image,” Doll News 2011, pp. 80–99), but rather to the idea of their roles in Japanese religion and culture. They need gold screens (byobu) behind them, a pair of lanterns flanking them, and a vase or two of flowers. This is also where the “dog boxes,” talismans owned by the girl and connected to her fertility, would be displayed. Normally the male doll sits on the right, the seat of honor in the Kyoto palace; to seat him to the left is a reference to the more Westernized seating pattern of the Tokyo Imperial protocols (post-1870; see Shigeki Kawakami, “Ningyo: An Historical Approach,” in Avitabile, ed., Ningyo, p. 13). She wears an elaborate “phoenix crown” or else the smaller tiara that came into use in the Meiji period, and carries an open fan. The lord wears a hat (kanmuri) with a tall piece of stiffened fabric on the back, and a sword, sticking out behind. He holds a simple wooden paddle which serves as scepter.

• On the next tier are three ladies (sannin kanjo) serving sake to the dairi-bina. Sometimes the central one is kneeling; she always holds a small table. The two other ladies hold metal serving vessels, one with a long handle and one with a short one. They wear red hakama over white kimono, and sometimes brocade jackets; they nearly always have very long hair.
• Next come the gonin-bayashi, five musicians constituting the standard orchestra for a Noh theater performance, with two hand-drums, a larger drum with sticks, a flute, and a singer. They are often depicted as boys. There exist antique sets of 7 or 10 musicians; these are men (or in at least one case women, Pate, Ningyo, 122-23) of the Imperial court, playing a wider range of instruments as part of an imagined performance in the palace.
• There may also be  two ministers or guardians (zuishin) with bow and arrow, one a young pale man and the other older, with white hair and a ruddy complexion; some take these as depictions of the Emperor’s bodyguards, others as his two principal administrators in Kyoto, the Minister of the Left and the Minister of the Right (udaijin and sadaijin).
• Finally, three servants (sannin shicho), adult men whose three little faces express joy, sorrow, and anger. Older groups depict three gardeners drinking around a fire, but the current fashion is for three Imperial valets, waiting on the lowest shelf with the Emperor’s shoes, banner, and hat (or parasol and spear–the items are covered and hard to identify) “in case he wants to go for a walk.”
• Other hina dolls for the display were created but never became part of the standard set: a court lady, dressed like the sake-servers, holding on a leash a small dog; a similarly dressed lady with a cart full of flowers; a child with a branch of blossoms. Also, dolls of distinction, such as gosho dolls, might be placed on the upper shelves, and everyday dolls would be arrayed below to share in the glory.
• Of the furniture, the most important are the two diamond-shaped tables which carry colored mochi treats, and dinner tables for the two principal figures. Often there are also two trees, made of silk or even semi-precious stones, which may or may not represent the orange and cherry trees at the portal of the Shishinden, the audience room of the Imperial palace (Dairi) in Kyoto. In addition, the display includes various toy implements (dougu), some representing traditional pastimes such as games and picnics, others representing a wealthy Edo-period girl’s dowry (chests, shelves, tables, mirrors, even books).
• An oxcart and a palanquin (kago) complete the display, providing at least originally an opportunity for real play, and now a reference to the long premodern period, going back to the Tale of Genji, when these conveyances were the aristocratic (and especially feminine) alternative to horseback or shank’s mare.
• A full-sized tiered food box (jubako) is often included, and may be used to store some of the special treats shared by visitors to the display. (Thanks to Terry Brown for the note that he has used the jubako in the display in this way, as I have myself.)

The Third Day of the Third Month

Thomas Hull writes: “This refers to the folded paper doll, resembling a kimono, called a Kata Shiro, used for purification in a Shinto ceremony. The Kata Shiro would be cast into a body of water, or burned, taking the user’s sins away. In fact, in the earliest photograph of a hina display, a Kata Shiro of this type shares the dais with the emperor/empress pair.”  (Source: Luella Tilton Hart, The Japanese Doll, 1952).

It’s hard to tell to what extent Genji’s adventure with his katashiro actually influenced the perception of 3/3 as a day for playing with dolls, but it may have done so, since in other chapters Genji and his future wife, little Murasaki, play with hina. At any rate, the idea of making paper dolls as gifts for 3/3 and of giving them to little princesses for play on that day is recorded occasionally in the diaries of the ladies of the Imperial court.

For a long time the custom was evidently to make a pair of paper dolls representing a man and woman of the Heian period Imperial court (the male with ballooning sleeves and trousers and an eboshi hat, the woman with her limbs hidden modestly and long hair); still today this tachibina, “standing hina,” pair, symbolizes the festival. In 1625, the first record appears of some kind of display of hina on 3/3: the Imperial court ladies took care of a stand and equipment used for doll play by the Empress Tofukumon’in (Tokugawa Masako, a daughter of a Shogun who had married the Emperor, thus bridging the gap between the traditional aristocracy and the military Shogunate which effectively ruled Japan). This would have been the first 3/3 after the birth of Tofukumon’in’s daughter, who would later be the Emperor Meisho, so it is possible to see this as the moment in Japanese politics as well as culture when hina asobi began to spread beyond the seclusion of the palace’s women’s quarters (see Miyazaki, “Development,” p. 225). The festival was legally established as Hina Matsuri, literally “Festival of the hIna dolls,” in 1687. (Note: a female tenno, or emperor, was rare in Japan but Meisho was not the only one to hold this sacred office.)

When doll-makers got involved, they developed new forms and styles for this pair of dolls, based on the actual or perceived fashions of the Imperial court. For a while dolls with spherical heads were desirable, but egg-shaped heads and pear-shaped heads went in and out of fashion, and the modern style settled into a type where the princess has a round, full face and the lord a more oval one. The most expensive types of doll grew very large (up to about 3 feet tall for the seated princess with crown) or, after laws were made restricting their size, very small. Gradually the doll-makers of Kyoto and Edo, and their wealthy customers, evolved the full display with at least 15 dolls and plenty of miniature furniture. As the dolls grew more expensive and decorative, the hina-dan developed more tiers, so that the best dolls were placed out of reach–though children might still make and play with paper dolls, or play with the furniture (see Miyazaki, “Development,” pp. 234-35). Many  elaborate 18th and 19th-century dolls survive now as antiques.

Edo hina styles

A very popular style for hina in the Edo period was the Kyoho-bina; the pyramidal bodies were tall and the heads egg-shaped. The pair shown here are from the early 20th century but reflect that older style.

Dairi

Hime

The supplementary dolls

During the Edo period, sets of musicians, then ladies-in waiting, then paired ministers, then servants developed to join the two main dolls and whatever others a family had collected. The dolls in the following slides probably date from the early 19th century. A set of five musicians (gonin bayashi) is here represented by only two survivors, and an old group of three ladies (sannin kanjo) by a pair. Finally, there is a particularly charming drummer, who may have been part of a large set of musicians or simply a stand-alone work evoking them.

Gonin bayashi

Kanjo

Zuishin

Drummer

The Edo period had such a distinctive cultural continuity because the Shogunate barred all contact between the Japanese and foreigners, starting in 1616. In 1854, the American Commodore Perry began negotiations to force Japan to enter trade and diplomatic relations with the rest of the world. After the Shogun was deposed and the Meiji Emperor took his throne in Tokyo, every aspect of Japanese life was examined in light of the need for, on the one hand, swift modernization and industrialization, and, on the other, preservation of a strong sense of national identity. Both of these were necessary to resist colonization or exploitation by Western powers. The lunisolar calendar with its go-sekku was replaced by the Gregorian calendar on January 1, 1873, and at the same time the old holidays were replaced by new ones focusing on the Emperor’s mystical bond with his nation. For some decades there was doubt as to whether Hina Matsuri should be celebrated on March 3, or according to the old lunar calendar later in the year, or not at all; practices varied. Eventually, however, the festival, like the 5/5 festival (Boys’ Day, from the American point of view), became important as an opportunity to ritualize specifically Japanese hopes and values, including marriage and families, and also respect for the Imperial family and their role in Japanese history.

The hina doll celebration weathered its deprecation by the Meiji government quite well, and thrived despite such disasters as the 1923 earthquake which obliterated many treasured hina stored in Tokyo homes or in “fireproof” buildings (kura) which could not protect them. It was brought to the Americas by immigrants and to Korea and Manchuria by Japanese families as the empire expanded, though (so far as I know) it did not spread outside the Japanese communities. A great challenge was the end of World War II, which brought not only the destruction  of Japanese cities and people, but also the failure of the proud autonomy and imperial ambitions with which Japan had confronted the West for almost a century. However, Hina Matsuri was a part of the traditional culture–along with the Emperor and Empress–which some Westerners respected–perhaps romanticized–and encouraged. It survived and still flourishes now in the 21st century.

As new ideas about marriage and the role of a wife in society have developed, the celebration of Edo-period domesticity and Heian-period romance probably seems harder for some mothers and girls to accept; I infer this from conversation with some Japanese women, but I don’t know whether the problem has been formally discussed in public. New standards of “cuteness” have also affected the hina display, though the traditional figures are still very popular. In years of the dog or rabbit, animal dairi-bina are produced to celebrate; there are also dairi-bina of Mickey and Minnie Mouse (to see some, search for “Mickey hinamatsuri”), of Hello Kitty,  and of the Japanese Barbie-type doll Licca and her boy friend. But the dolls are still treated with great respect, and seen by many as capable of taking on the misfortunes of those who touch them in the right spirit, just as in Genji’s day.