As an annual event to pray for girls to grow up well, the “doll festival” is widely known in modern
Japan.
The custom of the doll festival became established during the Edo period, and is said to have been
such a luxurious spectacle at times that the feudal government banned it.　But are the dolls merely
luxuries of exhaustive splendor and wealth?　Or, is there some objective in donning such gaudy
attire?
Here, we separated the dolls into the following four types by classifying and analyzing the expressions
of attire for the dolls, based on the diagrammatic image data regarding the standing dolls:
(1) Standing dolls as toys
(2) Standing dolls as the main characters of the doll festival
(3) Standing dolls as juxtapositions to seated dolls
(4) Standing dolls as arts and crafts
Further, the significance of the standing dolls is that parents on behalf of their children for health
and happiness either for several years after they were born or when they were children.　Since the
middle of the Edo period, it included the pray for good marriage.