Hinamatsuri (Doll Festival)
Next: March 3, 2027
Peach blossoms and dolls for daughters.
The story
Where it comes from
Hinamatsuri, the Doll Festival, is Japan's day for wishing girls health and happiness. It is also called Momo no Sekku, the Peach Festival, because under the old calendar it fell when the peach trees bloomed. Its roots lie in an older purification rite on the third day of the third month, when paper or straw figures were sent away on the water to carry off bad luck. Displaying dolls on this day began in the Edo period, in the seventeenth century, and became a nationwide custom after 1868.
How it's celebrated
From late February, families set out a tiered stand of hina dolls: an emperor and empress in Heian court dress at the top, with court ladies, musicians and attendants below, and peach blossoms beside them. On the day they share chirashizushi, diamond-shaped hishimochi rice cakes in pink, white and green, hina-arare crackers and sweet shirozake. It is not a public holiday, and many families give a set of dolls for a daughter's first festival.
Did you know
- The Tale of Genji describes a purification on this day in which a paper figure is set adrift on a boat, the custom from which the dolls descend.
- The belief that leaving the dolls out too long will delay a daughter's marriage is thought to date only from the early Shōwa period; it also kept the silk dolls safe from damp and insects.
- In Tottori Prefecture and at Kyoto's Shimogamo Shrine, people still float paper dolls down the river in the old nagashi-bina rite.
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