The Lolita Complex: - Scholarly Commons Home

have taken on certain attributes of that child and cannot be safely discarded
until the object’s ‘spirit’ has been separated from it through ritual action.” 67
In the case of a departed owner, these procedures are often performed out
of terror should the doll’s soul come back to haunt.
According to Angelika Kretschmer:
A person might have a latent fear that an[y] object is endowed with a spirit. If such
an object is casually thrown away, the spirit might be offended and even curse the
human. Therefore, the spirit must be pacified before the object can be discarded….
The chief priest of Awashima Kada Shrine who performs kuyō rites for… dolls
expresses this sentiment: “[People] come to… dispose of dolls that might bring evil
upon them…. It [also] seems very cruel to treat [the dolls]… as mere garbage”. 68
The method of disposal is sometimes burial but usually dolls are destroyed
by burning as, says Kretschmer, this “symbolically eliminates impurities
and… mimics human cremation”. 69
Schattschneider discusses this phenomenon in regard to yet another
purification rite in connection with nagashi bina (“floating dolls”), whereby
ningyō who are “understood as capable of absorbing evils or impurities that
70 afflict persons” are floated downstream and out to sea in boats from the
Awashima Jinja Shrine during the Hina-nagashi festival every March 3 rd
(Girls’ Day), * 71 “carrying away [with them] these forms of pollution” (Fig.
73). 72
She also highlights that this “relatively recent practice of ningyō kuyō
* Hina-nagashi is held on the same day as Hina-matsuri.
Page | 146