The home of boxed dolls from the old times. Kyushu’s number one doll making town

Hina dolls exhibition

The gentle look on the faces of the emperor and empress festival dolls (dairibina) in a rectangular box.
In addition to its tea, Yame is a town famous for its Japanese paper and lanterns as well as for the art of Hina dolls making.
Under light peach colored lanterns the boxed dolls are quietly waiting for people to come and visit.

The luxury of the doll center and the simplicity of boxed dolls

Boxed dolls from the early Showa period

The city of Yame located in the southern part of Fukuoka prefecture started the festival event called ”Hina no Sato / Yame lantern festival” in 1997. The Yame region is the biggest gyokuro tea (very high-quality green tea) production area in Japan, and since early times it has been a traditional craft town with such products as Japanese paper, wax, altars, paper lanterns and stone lanterns.
Yame was making unique rustic boxed dolls from the Edo period until the third decade of the Showa period. One of the most important points of the local hina dolls festival is to see these rare boxed dolls.

A wedding ceremony in full ceremonial court dresses

There is a lot of public Hina dolls exhibition spots with more than 100 of them scattered around the town including places like town houses and private residences along the shirakabe-dori (white-walled street), shops inside shopping streets and so on. For tourist groups these are most likely to be such places as ”Yokomachi Machiya Community Hall”, ”Sakaiya”, ”Yame Traditional Crafts Center”, etc. The most spectacular exhibit is the ”Yame dolls hall”. There are such amazing things to see as dolls and accessories which the princesses of the clan of Tokugawa Shoguns were carrying in their wedding processions.

Rakko

In general, it is not known that such exhibits exist, so tourists will probably be very pleased. Also, during the festival period various events such as the ”Wedding ceremony in full ceremonial court dresses”, the ”Ohina-sama parade”, the ”Ohina-sama memorial festival” will be held.
As for places to have food and rest, it is possible to accomodate many adult guests at the ”Bengara village” which has a local beer restaurant and hot spring facilities. As for restaurants, we recommend you to eat at refurbished town houses located in the shirakabe (white-walled) streets. You can enjoy a relaxing time here.
As for the highlights of the area, similar to Yanagawa, bathing in hot springs of Chikugo City and in Shin-funagoya Hot Springs and touring the mochi shops is reasonable in terms of distance. There are also hot springs and accommodation facilities in Green Peer Yame in the town of Kuroki in the city of Yame and Ike-no-Yamaso and the Hoshi-no-onsenkan Kirara in the village of Hoshino in the city of Yame.