MONTHLY NEWS
March 2003

City Hosts Big Doll Festival

The 60-tier doll display at Tomisaki Shrine.

March 3 in Japan is the day of the Doll Festival, also known as Girls' Day, when families display sets of traditional Japanese dolls in their houses. The Doll Festival is an occasion for a family to pray for the health and happiness of girls. This festival is known in Japanese as Hina Matsuri.

	A doll display in the middle of a road.

The Doll Festival is a home-centered event, and some families have quite large and elaborate doll collections. But for people who want to see a really huge collection of dolls, there is a public doll festival known as the Katsuura Big Hina Matsuri, a citywide event organized by the city of Katsuura in Chiba Prefecture. During this festival, which this year ran from February 22 through March 2, about 12,000 dolls are displayed all over Katsuura in such places as the civic hall, libraries, train stations, and even in the middle of streets. The festival always attracts plenty of visitors, and this year was no exception. Kids who came to the festival were amazed at the number of dolls they saw.

Kids line up for a commemorative photo.

The high point of the Katsuura Big Hina Matsuri is the doll display at Tomisaki Shrine, whose steps act as the doll stand for the display. While an ordinary family's doll stand has seven tiers at most, the steps to Tomisaki Shrine have 60 levels! Laden with about 1,500 dolls, the steps look like a solid wall of dolls. The display is especially pretty at night, when it is lit up. The display is outdoors, so the dolls are carefully taken out every morning and put away every night. (This task is performed by volunteers from local merchants' and housewives' associations.) On rainy or very windy days, the dolls are not displayed.

	Parading while carrying peach blossom

On February 22, the first day of the festival, children from Katsuura aged seven or younger put on special festival clothing and took part in a parade. The parade started at Tomisaki Shrine and ended at the civic hall, where 7,000 dolls were on display. This year 30 children joined in the parade. One of the participants, a first-grade girl, commented, "I had to get up at six o'clock this morning. And I feel cold in this light robe! But I really enjoy getting dressed up in these pretty festival clothes and having my face made up." The girl had a big smile on her face.

So where does the city of Katsuura in Chiba Prefecture get so many dolls from? Surprisingly, most of them came from another town in Japan that is also called Katsuura. Of the 12,000 dolls displayed in the Katsuura Big Hina Matsuri, 7,000 come from the town of Katsuura in faraway Tokushima Prefecture, which is about a 12-hour drive from Chiba. The Tokushima Prefecture town has been holding its own Big Hina Matsuri since 1989. That town displays 15,000 dolls indoors on a special pyramid-shaped stand. The other dolls displayed in the Big Hina Matsuri in Katsuura, Chiba, were given to the city by various other cities and towns.

Nowadays, many families no longer own Hina Matsuri doll sets. Some households do not have the space to display the dolls during the festival or to store them during the rest of the year. In other households, the kids are all grown up and are no longer interested in displaying dolls. Families like these from all over Japan donate their dolls to the city of Katsuura. This year the city received 3,500 dolls. Some of these dolls are over 100 or even 200 years old.

Some of the dolls were sent with messages of friendship. One said, "My grandparents (who gave me these dolls) and my parents, who are all up in heaven now, will be delighted to see the dolls being enjoyed by lots of people in Katsuura."

Dolls made by local children

Other notes expressed the senders' happy memories of their own families' Doll Festivals. One said, "We used to have so much fun singing songs and putting out these dolls each year to pray for the health and happiness of our children (our two daughters)."

Some of the dolls displayed at the Big Hina Matsuri in Katsuura, Chiba, were made by local children. The children made their dolls by decorating empty bottles and other household items with paper. Thanks to the children's creative efforts, festival visitors got to enjoy not only old dolls from faraway places but also new dolls made by local kids.