A simple paper doll, floated away, carrying whatever you most want to let go of.
In an old Japanese custom called nagashi-bina, simple paper dolls are floated away on a stream to carry off bad luck and illness.
It is the gentle ancestor of today’s grand Hinamatsuri doll festival — proof that a doll can be a vessel for what we most want to let go of.
Nagashi-bina (“doll-floating”) traces back to the Heian period, when simple human-shaped paper or straw figures called hitogata were rubbed against the body to absorb sickness and misfortune, then set adrift on a river or the sea — a purification ritual, not a toy.
Over the centuries the custom merged with a separate girls’ doll-display tradition to become Hinamatsuri, the 3 March Doll Festival, where families now display an elaborate tiered set of court dolls (hina ningyō) rather than floating them away. A handful of towns, including Tottori and parts of Wakayama, still hold a nagashi-bina ceremony each spring, keeping the older river custom alive.