YOSHIDA Junji

Here is a photo of my daughter, Ai. She was born on December 18th, 1994 and was 13 month-old when this photo was taken. She does love her toy phone on her baby cart. Every time I say hello (It's "Moshi-Moshi" in Japanese) or telephone (Den-wa) to her, she never forgets to go to the cart and pick up the phone.:-)

We have a celebration in Japan for female children on March 3rd. It's called Hina-Matsuri and is held to celebrate the sound growth of our daughters. Hina refers to O-Hina-Sama, dolls with Kimono's of the very old day's royal fashion and Matsuri to a festival. The O-Hina-Sama dolls displayed in the house represent a scene in a royal wedding.

This is a close up view of the royal palace at the top of the tier stand. The palace is about 1.5 meter wide. It is not common today to have this kind of toy palace in the Hina-Matsuri display. Just the dolls. Ai's set of display used to be a gift to Erika from her grandfather a bit over 30 years ago.

Here's a close-up view of the inside palace. The two on the higher floor are the royal couple. The other three (one is hiding behind a pillar) are shrine maidens who serve holy Sake (O-Miki) to the couple. The pledge of marriage in Shinto ceremony is made by the couple drinking cups of Omiki alternatively. A very shallow ceramic cup is filled with a little Omiki, and the groom drains up the cup with three sips. Then the cup is handed over to the bride, and she does the same. The sequnce is repeated two more times, each time with a new cup. Three sips and three cups make 9 sips in all. This ceremony is therefore called San-San-Kudo, which literally means three, three, 9 times.

The remaining steps of the tier stand display the furnishings that the bride has brought and the carrriages she took to the palace. Here's the carriage pulled by a cow (Gi-ssha).

This is another carriage (Kago) that might have brought valuables and tablewares to the palace. The vassals of the bride family bore on their shoulders the horizontal bars sticking out of the roof.