I happened across this gorgeous picture in the photo gallery of Mainichi, a Japanese newspaper. Sadly there were no permalinks that I can find, so the link under the image will shortly be pointing to something else altogether.

The text that went with the photo is as follows:

Children look up at Sagemon, traditional ornaments for the Hina Matsuri (Doll Festival for girls on March 3) at the Kanpo-no-Yado hotel in Yanagawa, Fukuoka Prefecture. Sagemon is made of kimono cloth and local traditional decoration balls that have been handed down from the Edo Period.

Dolls? Sagemon? It looks like temari (Japanese embroidered balls) and kimekomi (Japanese quilted balls). I wasn’t seeing any dolls, although I admit on 5th viewing you can see little stylized animal shapes on the bottom of some of the strands.

Another site that mentions dolls with a nice picture of hanging decorations. http://www.jnto.go.jp/tourism/en/s082.html

And one related to the festival http://www.fukuoka-tourism.net/e/event/

It was only after I saw this site that I realized where the dolls were. http://nippon-kichi.jp/article_list.do?p=2570&ml_lang=en

The last book in the boxes below has a very nice picture of the dolls (the word “dolls” makes me think of human-ish figures, but I think they mostly mean critters in general).

Note: the links below are affiliate links (as are most of the book links on my sites), but feel free to print out the page when you get there (after looking at the nice bigger pictures!) and take it to a local Japanese bookstore to order for you (to avoid shipping and tariff, it’s what I do) if you have one.

I own the first book. It has minor knot content, but I mostly bought it for the woven balls, although I do love temari and someday intend to finish the one I started 10 years ago now. 8) This book is also available via eBay. EBay listings being what they are, the link below will expire sooner rather than later, but if you go directly to the store, you might find it relisted. http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=400025842442&ssPageName=ADME:B:SS:CA:1123 http://stores.ebay.ca/Rocobee