March 3rd is a day for girls in Japan.
It is a festival day to wish the girls to grow up safely and healthy.
Few days before this day comes, we displays a dolls of ancient nobles.
These dolls are called "Ohina-sama", which means "small ones".
The festival it self is called "Hina matsuri", which means "A doll (small ones) festival".
It is getting a little rare, but most of families who has girl in Japan has a set of dolls.
My family had them when I was child, too.
The dolls are displayed on the stage like stair ways, and the pictures bellow are the standard ways to set the dolls.
Each dolls has fixed positions.
The highest place are seats for the emperor(お内裏さま) and empress (お雛さま).
At the second row from the upper side, the three court ladies (三人官女) stays.
These ladies holds a tools each, a special pot which pours Japanese rice wine(sake), small dishes to drink sake, and special plate to place the foods. We use these tools when having a wedding ceremony in shrines.
At the third row, five musicians (五人囃子) stays.
As my lends was not wide enough, I only could take four of them...
There were one more musician at left.
Most of the musician dolls had drums and flutes.
Fourth row, the ministers (左大臣と右大臣) stays.
They are the bodyguards for emperor and empress.
At this day, I was in a museum called Suzaka Art Park, and the dolls I liked best was the ministers bellow.
As they were placed a high place and covered by window, it was little difficult to take picture clearly... I can't tell how but It seemed cooler then other ministers in this museum.
At fifth row, three servants (三人上戸) stays.
The long thing a man above hold is an umbrella to shade empress from the sunlight.
The thing a man above hold is a stand to place empress's Japanese sandal.
The long thing a man above hold is an umbrella to cover empress from the rain.
At the bottom row, there are some treasures are set.
The tools in the picture above is a tea set to serve Japanese style tea.
The car in the picture above is for empress to ride.
It is said that this festival's origin were in Heian era(平安時代), about 1200 years ago.
The purpose of this festival is to protect the girls and daughters from evil things, the devils and sicknesses.
The people believed that the dolls will take place if the unhappy things comes.
Today, I introduced the basic information about Hina matsuri.
The pictures were taken at Suzaka Art Park and there were more beautiful and huge displays.
I will introduce it in soon again.
I forgot one more thing.
I realized that Japan google's top page was in Hina maturi picture today.
Please click
here to jump to google Japan.
Thank you for reading!!
Good night!!
