The Japanese festival Hina Matsuri (Dolls Festival), like many other Japanese festivals, has both a spiritual and an aesthetic quality. The spiritual significance of Hina Matsuri is to purify and to ward off the bad luck, and its origins are in a very old tradition called Hina-Nagashi. The old belief was that by rubbing the body with a human shaped paper doll, the bad luck was transferred to the doll, which was then thrown in a running stream of water.

Over the years, as the tradition evolved, the dolls were made more and more sophisticated and the Hina Dolls are now the epitome of Japanese refinement…

Hina Matsuri Dolls

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Yesterday’s Japan Photo: The Cherry blossoms wave, Sakura Zensen