Hina dolls

Among their origins are the figures (hitogata) onto which impurities were transferred before they were floated down rivers, and hiina asobi, the paper-doll play of girls of the Heian aristocracy. Doll festivals appear in records at the beginning of the Edo period, and the name hina ningyō was also born then. Early Edo dolls were standing figures (tachibina); from the Kan'ei-bina of the 1620s–40s they became three-dimensional, and in the Kyōhō era large Kyōhō-bina appeared, sometimes more than 45 cm tall. The shogunate repeatedly banned extravagant dolls, and around the Kansei Reforms tiny, exquisitely made keshi-bina only a few centimetres high became fashionable. In the late Edo period came yūsoku-bina, which accurately reproduce court dress, and, in Edo, the realistic and showy kokin-bina, on which today's hina dolls are modelled. The display stand was flat in the early Edo period, gained steps over time, and the full set of fifteen dolls became established at the end of the Edo period. Miniature copies of furnishings, called hina dōgu, are displayed with the dolls. Historically the male doll stood on the viewer's right, as is still done in the Kansai region; after the enthronement of the Shōwa emperor, the Tokyo doll trade changed the arrangement, and in the Kantō region the male doll is placed on the viewer's left. Tokyo museums keep hina dolls and hina dōgu that the wives and daughters of the Mitsui family loved, and a set that Iwasaki Koyata had specially made and his wife Takako cherished.

Choose one piece of hina dōgu and look at it closely: how much of the real furnishing has been copied at this small size?

For whom were these dolls made, and with what wish?