Girls' Day in Japan, called Hina Matsuri or Hinamatsuri, falls on March 3. It is not a national holiday, and the flower in its traditional name, the Peach Festival, does not keep to the date: Judy Shoaf, on her University of Florida page on hina dolls, notes that the peaches "bloom early in the third month of the old lunar calendar, not on March 3."
That gap between the name and the date is a good way into the festival, because it points at what the day is made of. This guide covers the festival around the dolls: who hosts whom, why the date is March 3, what goes on the table, how March 3 sits beside May 5, and where a traveler in Tokyo might meet it. The dolls themselves have their own guide, so how to read a tiered display is left to our article on hina dolls. The facts come from Nippon.com, Shoaf's page, Japan's Act on National Holidays, Wikipedia, our own kimekomi guide and an interview with a Tokyo doll maker.
According to Nippon.com's festival guide, Hinamatsuri, the doll festival, is observed each year on March 3 in Japan as an expression of wishes for the health and happiness of young girls. Families typically put out dolls that stand for an ancient imperial wedding and enjoy colorful festive foods.
It is also not a national holiday. The English translation of the Act on National Holidays lists the national holidays in Article 2, and March 3 is not among them; Children's Day, May 5, is. Wikipedia's entry on Hinamatsuri puts the same fact in a parenthesis: "but not a national holiday."
In our reading, Shoaf's account of the day is mostly domestic: girls and their mothers set out the dolls, friends visit, treats are shared. Civic displays and special events she describes as something that happens "In some places." What the dolls mean and how a tiered stand reads from top to bottom is the subject of our guide to how to read a hina display; this article stays with the festival around them.
Of the festival and the days leading up to it, Shoaf writes that they are "a time for visiting; girls play hostess to their friends, and also to the ningyo, who are “fed” in their tiny dish sets." Wikipedia agrees about the friends: during Hinamatsuri and the preceding days, it says, girls hold parties with their friends.
Shoaf also notes that a full-sized tiered food box, a jubako, is often included in the display and "may be used to store some of the special treats shared by visitors to the display." In her account, hosting sits beside the display of the dolls rather than replacing it.
Wikipedia adds a contrast worth keeping in mind. It says that historically the dolls were used as toys but that "in modern times they are intended for display only." Shoaf's “fed” dolls and Wikipedia's display-only dolls do not fit together neatly, and neither source says how common each practice is today.
A doll maker in Tokyo speaks to the older side of that contrast. Kenji Kanabayashi, third-generation head of Mataro, gave an interview published on our masters site on 3 October 2026. He is describing kimekomi dolls of an early period, not the March festival, and the period he means runs "from the end of Meiji into Taishō." "Back then, dolls were more or less the only toys there were — there was nothing like today's video games — so playing with dolls was simply how children played," Kanabayashi says. He adds that "small children carried dolls around, playing house with them."
Girls' Day is held on March 3, the third day of the third month, which Nippon.com describes as one of the five sekku, the seasonal festive days of the traditional calendar. Wikipedia adds that the five were fixed on 1 January, 3 March, 5 May, 7 July and 9 September after the Gregorian calendar was adopted. The festival is sometimes called Momo no Sekku, the Peach Festival.
The name is the puzzle. Wikipedia says the festival was traditionally known as the Peach Festival because peach trees typically began to flower around this time, adds that this is "no longer true since the shift to Gregorian dates," and notes that the name remains. Nippon.com traces the name to a Chinese belief that peaches have the power to purify as well as keep away evil spirits.
In our reading, the history of the date is a story of two breaks: a merger of customs, in which purification with stand-in dolls and the doll play of aristocratic girls came together, and a change of calendar, which took the peaches out from under the name.
Shoaf traces the five festivals to China. The five festivals, go-sekku, "came to Japan from China before 500 CE": the first day of the first month, the third of the third, the fifth of the fifth, the seventh of the seventh and the ninth of the ninth. Each day is associated with certain plants, and the third of the third with peach blossoms. She describes the third-month day as "a day for banquets or picnics by a “winding stream” involving drinking and poetry."
Wikipedia, which gives the names Kyokusui no en and Jōshi no harai, traces the later custom of floating dolls to the Kyokusui no en, a gathering on riverbanks in which people drank, purified themselves of impurities and composed tanka while cups of sake floated along the current. It says that in the Heian period aristocratic families adapted the practice as Jōshi no harai: an onmyōji performed a purification rite, and a doll was rubbed against the body to absorb impurities before being set adrift on a river.
Nippon.com adds another route, through peaches: in Japan, it says, the Chinese beliefs about peaches gave rise to the custom of using dolls as surrogates to take on spiritual impurities; the dolls were dropped into moving water so that the current carried the contaminants away. Another tradition arose: girls of the Heian aristocracy played with wooden or paper dolls. The two customs came together, Nippon.com says, to form Hinamatsuri.
So three customs, a banquet by a stream, a rite of sending impurity downstream on a stand-in, and the doll play of aristocratic girls, appear across these accounts. In our reading, they add up to a change of use rather than a straight line of descent.
The second break came with the new calendar. Shoaf writes that the lunisolar calendar with its go-sekku was replaced by the Gregorian calendar on January 1, 1873.
For the third-month festival, Wikipedia's account is a date on March 3 and a name that stayed. Shoaf's remark about when peaches bloom in the old calendar, early in its third month and not on March 3, is the same fact seen from the flower's side. In our reading, the name belongs to the old calendar's spring and the date to the new one. Shoaf adds that practice was unsettled for some decades: there was doubt whether Hina Matsuri should be celebrated on March 3, or according to the old lunar calendar later in the year, or not at all.
The old calendar has not entirely gone. Wikipedia says nagashi-bina ceremonies, in which participants make dolls out of paper or straw and send them on a boat down a river, are held around the country, and that some locations, such as the Nagashibina Doll Museum in Tottori City, "still follow the lunisolar calendar instead of doing it on 3 March." Wikipedia gives no date for the Tottori ceremony. Nippon.com's festival guide also mentions that in some parts of Japan dolls called nagashibina are still set afloat in rivers, without naming a place.
Kanazawa is a different case. Nippon.com's report on kinkatō says doll sets are generally packed up as soon as the day is finished, inspired by a traditional belief that the girls in a household where the dolls are kept out too long will have to wait until later in life to marry. "In Kanazawa, though, they are kept on display until well into April, perhaps because of a lingering observance of the old lunar calendar for traditional events." The reason offered is only a "perhaps."
Nippon.com lists five foods and drinks for Hinamatsuri: hishimochi, shirozake, hinaarare, chirashizushi and clam soup. Wikipedia's list overlaps with it and adds ichigo daifuku, strawberries wrapped in adzuki bean paste, and sakuramochi.
The sources attach a meaning to three of the five: the colors of the rice cakes, as one theory; the good-fortune ingredients of the sushi; and the shells in the soup. They say nothing of that kind about the crackers or the drink.
Hishimochi are diamond-shaped pink, white and green rice cakes. One theory, as Nippon.com puts it, is that the colors represent life, snow, and the buds on trees, respectively. It is one theory, so the colors are best held as a reading, not a rule.
Hina-arare are multicolored rice crackers, sometimes displayed together with the dolls. The name covers two common versions. In the Kantō region in eastern Japan they are typically sweetened puffed rice, while in Kansai in the west, round crackers made from glutinous rice are most common, according to Nippon.com, which gives the difference but no reason for it.
Chirashizushi is, in Nippon.com's description, a sushi dish with auspicious ingredients like shrimp and lotus root scattered over vinegared rice. Wikipedia gives the same dish as raw fish and vegetables on rice.
In our reading, the clam soup carries the clearest wish of the table. Soup made with hamaguri clams is associated with wishes for marriage, Nippon.com explains, because the two halves of the shell fit perfectly together, symbolizing marital harmony. Wikipedia says clam shells represent a joined pair. The same Nippon.com guide ties the dolls traditionally to hopes for a happy marriage, so the display and the soup point the same way.
The sources do not agree on what to call the drink. Nippon.com describes shirozake as "A cloudy white, sweet liquor made from glutinous rice and kōji," and says "Children drink amazake, a similar nonalcoholic version." Wikipedia calls shirozake, literally "white sake," the customary drink and says it is also called amazake, "sweet sake," a non-alcoholic sake. Nippon.com's wording implies that shirozake contains alcohol, while Wikipedia calls it non-alcoholic; the sources leave the alcohol question open.
One offering is now made almost entirely in a single city. Kinkatō, Nippon.com reports, are sugary sweets placed as an offering before the dolls in Kanazawa, Ishikawa. They are made in the shapes of items held to bring good fortune, including sea bream and other fish, vegetables and mushrooms, fruits, mandarin ducks, gourds and manekineko cat figurines. "The only ingredients that go into these sweets are sugar and water." The report says kinkatō was once made throughout Japan, but that today the confectioners of Kanazawa have a near-monopoly on this traditional treat, and that when the displays come down the sweets are broken into pieces for children to enjoy as a snack or used to sweeten stewed dishes.
The May festival is a subject of its own. This section only places it beside March 3: the two share one calendar, and the law treats them differently.
Girls' Day and the May festival are two of the five sekku, the ones that fall on 3/3 and 5/5. Wikipedia says May 5 was historically called "Boys' Day" and is now Children's Day, and that for this reason boys and men normally do not take part in setting up the doll display. Shoaf glosses the May 5 festival as "Boys’ Day, from the American point of view." For the festivals and annual rites of the Tokyo year, see our guide to annual rites and festivals.
The statute is the clearest place to see the difference. In the Act on National Holidays (Act No. 178 of 1948), Article 2 defines Children's Day, May 5, as a day "for honoring the personality of children, working towards their happiness, and expressing gratitude to mothers." The wording is about children and mothers; it does not mention boys. March 3 does not appear in the Article 2 list.
Under Article 3, national holidays count as public holidays. The sources do not say why May 5 has a place in the Act and March 3 does not.
As we read it, the festival reaches a visitor in three layers: what is open to anyone, what the trade keeps for those who ask, and what needs an introduction. Dates and venues change every year, and none of the sources lists a dated Girls' Day event in Tokyo, so this section gives no listings. For the city around the festival, see our guide to a quiet trip to Tokyo through art and architecture.
Shoaf writes that "In some places, there are civic displays of many doll sets," along with special events such as "living" displays featuring children in fancy dress, or the formal launching of nagashi-bina, now usually a pair of paper dolls in a straw boat, on a river or stream near a shrine. Neither she nor Nippon.com's festival guide names a Tokyo event or venue. The foods listed above are festival foods, but the sources do not say where in Tokyo they are sold. The reliable first step is the current year's listing from each venue's own official site.
The second layer is a trade street, seen from the sidewalk. Our guide to kimekomi and the doll district of Asakusabashi reports, citing Taito City, that the neighborhood's doll trade dates to 1711. Of its rhythm the guide says: "The doll trade here is not a year-round retail draw; it is a seasonal industrial rhythm that happens to be visible from the sidewalk twice a year, and largely invisible the rest of the time."
Those two times are the weeks before Hinamatsuri and Boys' Day. The same guide notes finer stock kept inside the wholesale shopfronts for department store buyers and repeat customers who know to ask, rather than for the casual walk-in.
The third layer is a display in a family's home. Shoaf's account is of girls and mothers setting it up a few days ahead and of visitors who share treats there.
The interview article also describes a program in which visitors make a doll of their own: they choose whether to make a boy or a girl doll, choose a color and pattern from several available costumes, and complete a single doll. The article does not say how visitors reach the program.
The sources describe three things about the festival now: the size of the display, the faces on the dolls, and a question about what the festival says.
Nippon.com is direct about the display: "Today, compact sets in glass cases suitable for the smaller spaces of modern Japanese homes are the norm." It adds that Iwatsuki in the city of Saitama is one of Japan's leading production centers for hina dolls.
The faces vary too. Shoaf writes that in years of the dog or rabbit, animal dairi-bina are produced to celebrate, and that there are also dairi-bina of Mickey and Minnie Mouse, of Hello Kitty, and of the Japanese Barbie-type doll Licca and her boyfriend, though the traditional figures are still very popular. She adds that "the dolls are still treated with great respect," and that the festival "still flourishes now in the 21st century."
The open question is hers, and she is careful about its status. Shoaf suggests that as new ideas about marriage and a wife's role in society have developed, the celebration of "Edo-period domesticity and Heian-period romance" may be harder for some mothers and girls to accept. Then she adds: "I infer this from conversation with some Japanese women, but I don't know whether the problem has been formally discussed in public." Nothing in the sources settles it.
First, it is not a national holiday, and in Shoaf's account it includes hosting: friends visiting, treats shared and dolls "fed" in tiny dish sets. March 3 is absent from the Act on National Holidays' list.
Second, the calendar moved and the name stayed. Wikipedia ties the Peach Festival's name to peach trees flowering around that time of year, which no longer holds on the Gregorian date. At the Tottori museum Wikipedia names, and perhaps in Kanazawa, the old calendar still shows through.
Third, parts of the table carry meanings. The two halves of a clam shell fit, and Nippon.com ties that to marital harmony; the colors of the rice cakes have one theory behind them in that guide. The crackers differ by region instead: Nippon.com gives different typical ones for Kantō and Kansai. And where the meaning stops, the sources stop with it.
The festival also still moves. Nippon.com says compact glass-case sets are now the norm, Shoaf describes dolls with the faces of Mickey and Minnie, and the question she raises about marriage is open. For the dolls themselves, our hina dolls guide is the next read, and for Tokyo's doll-wholesale street, the kimekomi guide to Asakusabashi.