Japanese Girls Day traditions live on among Hawai'i families
By Vicki Viotti
Advertiser Staff Writer
Marisa Ariyoshi, Kimi Andrew and Marissa Nagano are going to enjoy being girls today, though not in the same way that their grandmothers used to on Hina Matsuri, the Festival of Dolls.
Eugene Tanner • The Honolulu Advertiser
Better known here as Girls Day, the festival is a Japanese tradition still observed, even in multiethnic families.
Shirokiya's Ala Moana store has a large collection of traditional Girls Day dolls for sale. This display is worth $2,200.
"Sometimes we're surprised when people come in and they have a Japanese last name but they don't look very Japanese," said Steven Fong, a manager and buyer at the Shirokiya's Ala Moana store. "They'll say they're one-eighth Japanese, or something, and that they want to do what their grandparents taught them."
Donn Ariyoshi, son of former Gov. George Ariyoshi and now a father himself, became active with the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai'i as a means of reinvigorating the culture in his life. His daughter Marisa, 2, is a beneficiary of that resolve.
"We may do a special dinner for our daughter, and we have the two dolls," he said, a reference to the central element in the traditional hina kazari doll display that usually features the royal couple and their courtiers. "And we'll have candies for her."
Not conventional mochi sweets?
"No," Ariyoshi confessed with a laugh. "My daughter doesn't really like mochi."
In 1948, postwar Japan adopted Children's Day to promote a celebration for both boys and girls. But in Hawai'i — and, says Honolulu Japanese consul Hiroko Taniguchi, in Japan as well — the separate traditions of Girls Day on March 3 and Boys Day on May 5 have persisted.
Children's Day, which also falls on May 5, is a national holiday, Taniguchi said, which may be why Boys Day gets more attention.
"It may be related to Japanese traditions," she acknowledged. "They somehow like boys."
But Hawai'i seems more evenhanded about how children are treated. Fong has noticed on buying trips that the Tokyo store displays for boys gifts — warrior dolls, replicas of weapons and carp banners — are grander than those for girls. In Hawai'i, he said, parents seem to buy about evenly for keiki of both genders.
Wendy Nagano is one of these, and she is looking out for the welfare of daughter Marissa, 2 1/2.
"At lunch, I walked to town and bought her a little purse that she will love and a dress that I will love," she said.
Some people still buy more traditional gifts, the hina matsuri dolls or the wooden kokeshi dolls, said Robert Iida who runs Iida's store.
"They give dolls, but the original meaning is lost," he said.
Girls Day observances were promoted by the shogunate of the Tokugawa as a means of encouraging family peace and stability and a certain social order, Iida said. That's the significance of the multitiered hina displays, with royalty on the top and descending layers of courtiers below, he said.
That deeper level of significance may also be lost on Hawai'i elders, who otherwise are doing their bit to keep the celebration an annual ritual, albeit a modernized version.
Lillian Yajima handed down to her daughter Lenny Andrew the doll display from her childhood so that granddaughter Kimi might enjoy it. Although almost everyone has given up on the tea parties that once went along with the day, Yajima said her daughter is preparing the traditional mochi to be shared with Kimi's preschool classmates.
But even grandma has kept up with the times. Kimi's gift is a Hello Kitty T-shirt, she said.
The important thing, said Nagano, is that girls know they're special, too. She also has a son, age 5.
"We put up the fish for him," she said. "So my daughter has to have her day."
And what kind of day will her son have? "He'll get squat," said Mom.
Reach Vicki Viotti at 525-8053 or vviotti@honoluluadvertiser.com.
