Tamil Nadu - Chennai   

Japanese way of ensuring health, happiness of girls

Staff Reporter

Colourful `Hinamatsuri' doll exhibition opens in the city

CHARMED BY IT ALL: Visitors admire the display at the Japanese doll festival.

CHENNAI: A Japanese doll exhibition has been organised here to mark the Hinamatsuri or Dolls Festival (also known as the Girls' Festival) celebrated in Japan on March 3.

The Consulate General of Japan, Chennai, and ABK-AOTS Dosokai, Tamil Nadu Centre, organised the event.

Hinamatsuri is held to pray for the health and happiness of girls.

The display consists of an emperor, empress, three ladies-in-waiting, five musicians and other dolls arranged on a stepped dais (similar to the Hindu festival `kolu') covered in scarlet cloth.

The festival is a modification of an earlier practice, in which people transferred their sicknesses and misfortunes onto paper hina dolls and floated them on streams or rivers in the hope that they would carry away misfortune.

The Japanese word for doll `ningyo', can also be read as hitokata, an object representing the human form into which evil spirits can be transferred through a purification or exorcism.

The exhibition is being held at the Tamil Nadu Centre, 37, Nelson Manickam Road, Aminjikarai. It is open to the public from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. It is part of the Japan-India Friendship year (2007) celebrations.

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