雛祭

Every year, on March third, Japan celebrates Hinamatsuri. In English we call it either Girl's Day or Japan Doll Festival; the kanji in the title means "doll festival". The tradition of Girl's Day began in the Heian period of Japanese history, which ran from 794 to 1185 AD. It was believed during this time that dolls had the power to posses bad spirits and so a custom developed called hina-nagashi, translated as "doll floating", in which the dolls would be put in a small boat and floated down the river to the sea, taking the bad spirits with them.

Today, it is a day to celebrate girls and young women. As they grow up, girls collect the dolls as gifts, and show them off on a red, terraced display in the days leading up to March 3rd. The top two dolls are the Emperor and Empress and then the court is below them. You can see examples in the pictures below. Kimonos are worn and special sweets and sushi are eaten, with a special white sake to drink. There is a superstition that if the dolls are left up too long after March 3rd, the longer it will be before the girl gets married, and the faster they are taken down the faster the girl will get married!

The Emperor and Empress; the woman on the tier below are court ladies

Laura, Morgan, and I had the great luck to be invited to a Girl's Day celebration that the ladies of the YWCA were throwing for international college students at Kumamoto's Cultural Center. Sadly, Morgan was unable to attend. I was attending Oe Church that morning and rushed to meet up with Laura before walking downtown. We were greeted cheerfully by the women of the YWCA and by our beloved Tawara-san. Tawara-san is part of the J-3 care committee here in Kumamoto and she and her husband are active in the church community. She has helped us so much since we arrived.

Laura and I were herded into the next room, which held a flurry of activity! So many young foreign women being besieged by Japanese matrons, throwing themselves into the task of getting us all into kimono. Do you know the scene in the Disney movie Mulan when she's getting dressed to go to the matchmaker, and she is just standing on the stool with her arms out, while her mother and grandmother run around her, and silk is flying everywhere? That's basically it, only kimono and I didn't have a stool to stand on.

Dressing in a kimono is no joke. It takes a long time, and all you can do is stand there with your arms out as you are dressed in multiple layers, and the layers of your obi (the piece around the middle) are tightened repeatedly. Often when they would pull to tighten it, they would pull so hard I would stumble forward as my heels lifted off the ground! This was often followed by laughter and checking repeatedly to make sure I was okay. I would take an obi over a corset in a heartbeat, but it is pretty darn tight and limits your movement immensely.

Tawara-san helped Laura and I pick out which kimono we wanted to wear, and then it was off to hair and makeup! Hair is worn up when you wear a kimono, so I had come prepared, but other girls were sitting there having their hair pulled up in beautiful arrangements, complete with large flower pins. After that, we waited some more before being ambushed ourselves!

I love wearing kimono. I feel more like a princess in a kimono than I did in any prom or bridesmaid dress. It is so elegant, so regal, so stately. Kimono just makes you feel beautiful. Happily, Laura caught some pictures of the ladies putting the finishing touches on my obi.

After we dressed, we moved back out into the hall to join the other ladies. There were some young gentlemen in attendance and they looked very dashing in the traditional men's kimono. We had a short tea ceremony and then we headed outside to get our pictures taken. It was funny to see the expressions of the Kumamoto citizens walking by, as all these foreigners in kimono came out of the center.

Walking in kimono is tricky. One of our new friends, Maria, put it this way "Walk like a bear, with your feet pointed in as you take a step forward. The kimono is a cylinder so you have to walk more circularly". This means no striding forward and you shuffle more than you actually pick your feet up. I'm sure I looked pretty funny as I tried to move like I usually do; it simply was not working and I am not good at the whole small, graceful steps thing.

We finished our pictures and got to know some new friends before listening to a young man from China play Japanese folk songs on a traditional two stringed Chinese instrument. It was a beautiful sound! When he finished (and we encored) it was time to learn traditional Japanese dance. Sadly I have no pictures. You will have to trust me when I tell you that it was highly entertaining. I am not a good dancer and there was Laura, counting off and doing wonderfully. I can say with pride that I got it by the end, although I had accidentally thrown my baton (yes, we were dancing with batons) and hit the girl in front of me. She was very gracious about it though!

Then, sadly, the magic was over, and it was time to change back into my American street clothes. I was back to myself, but have the pictures to prove, for one afternoon, I was someone else entirely.

One last scene from Girl's Day; one of my favorite moments that day. As we were headed out to dinner after the international church service we passed a young girl, probably about five or six, in a bright red kimono. She had what looked like her dad's black scarf, bulky around her neck, and she was rubbing her eyes with one hand while holding onto her mother with her other. They were waving goodbye to a woman that I can only assume was her grandmother, also in kimono, as she climbed into a taxi. It was a quick snapshot in time of three generations of Japanese women, all in beautiful kimono. Happy Hinamatsuri everyone!