The samurai district of Chiran — stone-walled garden paths, carefully maintained machiya houses, one of the best-preserved samurai streetscapes in southern Japan — becomes in late February and early March the setting for an exhibition of hina dolls. Each household displays its dolls in the traditional alcoves and rooms; the combination of the martial architecture and the delicate festival figures is unusual and quietly striking. Chiran carries multiple histories. The town is also known for the Chiran Peace Museum, which documents the kamikaze pilots who trained and departed from the nearby airfield during World War II. The co-presence of this heavy history and the spring doll festival is not managed into a coherent narrative; the town simply holds both, as towns do. The samurai gardens of Chiran are among the least visited significant garden complexes in Japan — less famous than Kanazawa's Kenroku-en, less accessible than Kyoto's gardens. In the hina matsuri season, they offer something those more celebrated sites cannot: a domestic ritual inside a domestic space, the dolls displayed where generations of families placed them, the military architecture softened temporarily by something entirely civilian.