Today is the Dolls' Festival (Hina Matsuri/雛祭り) aka "Peach Festival" (Momo no Seku/桃の節句) and also called "Girls' Festival" outside Japan. As we've said before, on this day, families with daughters decorate their houses with sets of very expensive dolls which have at their center a couple, emperor and empress, dressed in Heian Period (794-1185) imperial court clothes. In Tokyo, many shops making these dolls are in Asakusabashi and among them, one of the older is Kyugetsu (久月), founded in 1835. This shop, besides its amazing regular dolls, every year makes a set that isn't for sale and is related to current events. This year's set is these two couples: on the top tier, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in front of a White House backdrop and on the bottom tier, Tokyo governor Yuriko Koike and Osaka Prefecture governor Hirofumi Yoshimura in front of a backdrop with anti Covid-19 measure slogans. Both couples hold masks between them -the Americans a black one and the Japanese a pink one.
(For a bigger version of these pictures both in color and black and white, check my "Japan Arekore" set on Flickr).
1 comments:
Very thoughtful blog
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