Hinamatsuri.

One of the many Hina doll displays along the
downtown shopping arcade that day.

Sunday, March 3 was my first Hinamatsuri, also known as Girls' Day or the Doll Festival, a uniquely Japanese holiday that traces its origins back to over a thousand years ago. The holiday celebrates daughters and is a chance for their families to pray for health and a good marriage. Every year households traditionally set up a display of dolls representing the Emperor and Empress and their court, dressed in the traditional clothes of that time period. In the old days, it was thought these dolls could draw bad spirits away from the daughters. Full doll displays tend to be very expensive, so they are often passed down through generations. And they are always taken down soon after March 3, since the story goes that the longer the doll display is left up, the longer it will take for the daughters to get married.

The YMCA here in Kumamoto runs a Hinamatsuri event for international students every year, and one of the coordinators, a member of one of the Lutheran churches here in town, invited us to join. So after church that Sunday, Caroline and I strolled down to the local community center where we met our host, and several Kumamoto University graduate students.

We were first led into a large room where several other foreign women were already getting outfitted in kimono, and were allowed to pick from something like twenty kimonos laid out on the tatami mat flooring. I chose a dark blue one; Caroline took a bright red one. It was much like the tea ceremony we attended last month: three or four women scuttled around us, putting kimono piece after kimono piece on us--a ribbon here, a hidden towel there, a plastic insert to keep the obi (that wide sash) smooth.

Both of our kimonos were of the style known as furisode ("swinging sleeves"), appropriate for unmarried women as the long sleeves can be used to beckon suitors. Caroline's kimono turned out to be downright Biblical, with a dove and a rainbow. Mine had rickshaws on the sleeves and the front panel. Props to Japan for creating a garment that is beautiful and elegant and also features a mode of transportation at the same time.

 

Caroline and me at the tea ceremony.
(Photo courtesy of our host.)

 After we were all dressed up we were ushered into a smaller tatami-matted room where we were given sweets and tea. It was a much more informal tea ceremony than the one we had last month, but we had many more people there, too.

We also had the chance to hear the niko, or erhu in Chinese, a traditional Chinese bowed instrument that sounds much like a violin but with a thinner, more voicelike sound. A Chinese student, dressed in a traditional men's kimono, played four Japanese folk songs, one of which was apparently a Kumamoto folk song. My favorite part was hearing all the middle-aged Japanese ladies in the back of the room softly sing the lyrics. When the performance was done we all called for an encore from his own country, so he played a beautiful Chinese song called "Jasmine."

Last of all was a dance. An older, kimono-clad woman moved to the front and demonstrated a dance from the Aso region northeast of the city to the recording of an old Aso love song. The dance moves were quite subtle--one can't move very much past shuffling pace in a kimono--but really lovely and graceful. Afterward, we were immediately handed baton-like objects and she began to demonstrate another dance, this time a repeating sequence of tapping one's shoulders and legs with the baton. I may have gotten bruises from hitting myself too hard with the baton in my concentration.

The international group.
(Photo courtesy of our host.)

Surprisingly, Caroline and I were the only Americans at the whole event. We met new friends from all over the world, from Eastern Europe to the South Pacific. After the event ended, Caroline and I joined a couple of them in a stroll through the downtown shopping arcade to see the doll exhibits, talking about our hometowns and comparing them to Kumamoto. Truly an intercultural day all around. It was good to meet people outside church and school, too; I'm eager to form relationships with people all over this city.

(I couldn't find a Bible passage I felt fit with this entry, but since Caroline and I spent so much of the afternoon feeling like princesses, here's the wham line from the story of my favorite Biblical princess, Esther, who risked her life to save her people from annihilation:)

And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?
Esther 4:14b (NIV)