Celebrating Girls’ Day in Japan
With the generous support of the Asia New Zealand Foundation, founder and curator of Girl Museum, Ashley Remer traveled from 23 February to 4 March to research and document the Hina Matsuri/Girls’ Day festival in Japan. The century old doll festival is one of the only holidays in the world specifically devoted to girls.
"The aim of this trip was to gather information, images and video for an exhibition to be launched in September, Hina Matsuri: Celebrating Girls’ Day in Japan for Girl Museum, the first and only museum dedicated to the celebration and exploration of girlhood cross-culturally," explains Ashley.
During her stay in Japan, Ashley spent time at the National Museum of Tokyo and the Mitsui Memorial Museum, amongst others to view their displays of hina dolls/ningyo. She also visited a number of shrines dedicated to children and the celebration of Girls’ Day.
One of the largest of these shrines was in the coastal town of Katsuura in the Chiba Prefecture, a few hours by train from Tokyo. "This seaside village has become a significant Girls’ Day destination for tourists," she outlines.
"There were literally thousands of dolls displayed in front of people’s homes, shops and on temporary altars set up throughout the town."
Two of the main highlights of the trip for Ashley were visiting the Children’s Castle in Tokyo and the tiny coastal village of Kada in the Wakayama Prefecture for the day of festivities.
The Children’s Castle was built in commemoration of the UN’s 1979 Year of the Child as a place for Tokyo’s urban children to learn and play in a safe and creative environment (opened in 1985). Ashley is grateful to her hosts, Ricah Dohi and Taku Doizumi, for showing her their amazing work. Among the celebrations for Hina Matsuri/Girls’ Day, there were workshops where younger children with help from their parents, could make Emperor and Empress hats out of paper. Older children were able to make kime-bina (wooden dolls) that they sawed from an actual log themselves. Ashley was thrilled to be able to both observe and participate in this and other Hina Matsuri related games with the children.
On March 3, the actual day of the festival, Ashley journeyed to Kada and found the Awashima shrine a magical place covered in thousands of different dolls from ceramic cats to bronze ninjas. "In front of hundreds of people and several television crews, a local children’s choir performed songs and a young boy in the guise of the Emperor led the rituals.
"The main event involves taking these exquisitely made dolls, placing them into special wooden boats and parading down to the beach where they are launched into the ocean."
The results of her research will be an exhibition, comprised of images, text and video, addressing such topics as special/unique aspects of Hina Matsuri/Girls’ Day; preparations and rituals, costume and food; local and tourist response; and public and private celebrations. It will be available for public viewing at the Girl Museum website from 1 September. A curriculum guide for educators accompanying the exhibition will also be available to download.
For those able to attend the Wellington Japan Festival later this year, there will be an exhibition of video, photographs and objects from Ashley’s travels as well as dolls loaned from the Japanese Embassy. At the Taste of Japan festival 2010 in Auckland at the Logan Campbell Centre, on 25 September a slightly expanded exhibition, with the addition of activities, more photographs and dolls from the Consulate General of Japan, will be on view.
Ashley hopes that through her work she can inspire New Zealanders to visit Japan to experience Girls’ Day for themselves and to raise local awareness of Japanese culture, festivals and this unique tradition of honouring and celebrating girls. She also thanks Jenny Cameron at the New Zealand Embassy for her advice, information and insights into life in Tokyo.
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