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Friday, March 02, 2007

Nagashibina- Girls Day


As Japan’s peach trees blossom, parents attend to the future health and happiness of their precious daughters.


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Celebrating Hina Matsuri with peach blossoms

Photo: Evergreen Diary

In Japan the Hina Matsuri (Doll Festival) comes to a climax now. Held on the third day of the third month, it lands on the cusp of spring, a betwixt season, deserving a complicated rite. As Japanese culture—and perhaps it only—can do, these observances combine human formality and natural flowering, dressing up and letting go.

Hina Matsuri began several weeks ago with the setting out of tiered displays, covered in lucky red cloth. Here sit a cast of ceremonial figurines, usually the gift of maternal grandparents when a girl baby is born.

A full set of fifteen dolls includes “the emperor, empress, three ladies-in-waiting, two ministers, five musicians and three male servants. Friends are invited to admire the dolls and the young ladies, dressed in their best brightly flowered kimonos sit before the display and eat candies and other delicacies.” Some of these displays are hugely elaborate, others simple, but all represent a girl’s legacy and duty. In the ceremonies of Hina Matsuri, families act out the love, hopes and fears they hold for their young daughters.

Every Hina display includes peach blossoms, too, paper or porcelain and often fresh flowers, since the peach trees are blooming now. Hina Matsuri is nearly synonymous with Momo No Sekku, Japan’s peach blossom festival.  “Symbolizing a happy marriage,” the pink flowers are “indispensable decorations of this festival day. The blossoms signify the feminine traits – of gentility, composure and tranquility.” To us, peach blossoms also suggest the sweet unripeness of young girls, light fuzz soon to appear on their chins and arms.

We understand that the doll festival began in the Heian period (8th-12th C.) and was “legally established” in 1687. (Regrettably, we can’t imagine the U.S. Congress legislating a holiday for peach blooms, dolls, and girls.)

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Floating dolls, Nagashibina, to release evil

Photo: City of Tottori

The doll festival’s elaborate fun culminates more seriously, with the March 3rd rite of Nagashibina. On this day girls will take simpler dolls made of paper, sticks or – in this environmentally conscious age—“fish food” to a local stream to be blessed by a priest. “The elder solemnly places the doll” in a straw boat. “All misfortune clouding the girl’s future is in the doll. As the doll sails out of sight, down the river, so does the misfortune. The girl is now pure and clean.”

Nagashibina isn’t so widely practiced today, but we understand it’s still strong in Tottori along the Sendai, Sumida, and Fukuro rivers (attracting thousands of spectators). Accompanying the dolls on their way, of course are peach blossoms, and brighter yellow rape flowers, too. After March 3, the figurines at home should be taken down promptly or else “according to superstition, the daughter will have great trouble finding a husband.”

imageFrom Kurosawa’s Dreams (Yume), 1990

For those who can’t travel to Japan for Hina Matsuri, we recommend Akira Kurosawa’s film Dreams, from 1990. Its second episode, “The Peach Orchard” takes place during the doll festival, though its protagonist is not a girl but a young boy. His family has cut down an orchard, and the Hina dolls, come to life, condemn him. “Doll Day is for the Peach Blossoms, to celebrate their arrival. We are the life of the blossoms!” thunders the Emperor from a green hillside.

The boy protests that he had loved the orchard and cries for its loss. When the emperor mocks him—“This boy just likes peaches”—our young hero stands firm.

“No. Peaches can be bought, but where can you buy a whole orchard in bloom?” Truly. The emperor then bestows a gift better seen than described.

 



Posted by Julie on 03/02 at 01:23 PM
Culture & SocietyGardening & LandscapeSecular CustomsPermalink