Hinamatsuri Displays - ひな祭りの品物

On March 3rd, the Japanese celebrate Hinamatsuri, also known as the Doll Festival (and sometimes the Peach Festival because it used to occur during peach blossom season). It's mainly a day for families with girls, and part of the celebration includes displaying Hina Dolls.
[You can read more about the festival here and here if you want, but this post is just going to be about the displays.]

"Hina" can be understood to mean little and cute, small and lovely, or miniature ("matsuri" is the Japanese word for festival) and the prominent little cute miniature things around Hinamatsuri are certainly doll displays. They can range from $20 up to $2000 in price, and are made of all sorts of materials, mostly porcelain or plastic made to look like porcelain, and also really nice fabric. My understanding is that the principal characters are the Emperor and Empress, and the others are their retinue. Smaller sets display only the royal couple and instead of the various lords, ladies and servants, it is popular to include ornaments such as lamps, lanterns, tiny food offerings, flower petals (especially peach blossoms), and various symbols of long life or good fortune or love (cranes, rabbits, cherry or plum blossoms come to mind). Over the past few weeks I've made it a goal to snap as many photos of these as I can. I've posted the full set on Picasa if you want to see them all; meanwhile, here are some of my favorites with a few comments thrown in for good measure.

This one I'd say is a typical display, excepting the fact that it's glass-enclosed. But it's got the royal family, three court ladies (sannin kanjo), some flowers, lanterns, a wagon and what seems to be a mikoshi, with some peach blossoms blooming on the gilded wall in back.

This one is smaller, and is made out of Japanese fabric. Notice that the couple are seated in peach blossoms, and that adjacent displays also have peach blossom motifs.

I like this variation a lot. The royal couple being rabbits, it makes sense that the food should be carrots instead of rice dumplings! Also worth mentioning is the background of plum, pine and bamboo trees (these trees have a special meaning, and are featured together especially during the winter) and the cherry blossom fabric underneath the display.

This set is from a sort of Kmart-like store, where you can buy goods of all kinds at low prices. It's got all the trappings of its more expensive relatives (the flower arrangements, food offerings, multi-layered kimono, and folding screen background) but if you take a closer look you can tell it's not of the highest caliber. Even so, I believe it was around ¥2000 ($16).

On the opposite end of the price-scale, we have here a set from the Sogo Department Store's 9th floor, "Ye Olde Japan-Style Goods" shop. (They don't actually call it that, but it does a good job of selling totally upper-class, high-end products in a patriotic way. I imagine the Japanese who shop there feel nostalgic for the good ol' days without remembering that back in those same good ol' days, no one could afford this stuff.) Priced at ¥189,000, it's the most expensive couple on this post. I wasn't sure if the small chest of drawers came with, but I think it was supposed to.

This is a closeup of the dolls. It's not in focus, but you can tell that the material used to make their clothes is real, and the Empress' hair below the braid looks like doll hair. I doubt they make them anymore, but some time ago, Hina dolls were made with human hair.

The Hinamatsuri itself doesn't occur until March 3rd, so I have a few more weeks to collect photos. I'm curious to find the biggest, most audaciously expensive display. The other day at a train station I saw a poster advertising a huge event down in Katsura, where they fill up an entire street with dolls, so maybe we'll go check that out too if there's time.