At the far eastern edge of Kagawa, where Shikoku faces the narrow strait toward Awaji, the old soy-sauce town of Hiketa opens its houses each spring. From late February through March 3, some sixty homes and shops along the historic townscape put their hina dolls on display — not in a hall, but in their own entryways and shop windows, so that the festival is really a long, slow walk past other people's heirlooms.

Hiketa has its own style of display, the Hiketa-kazari: a full seven-tiered stand of court dolls flanked by large ichimatsu dolls, glossy-haired and watchful. When a daughter was born here, the family would mount this display for her first Doll Festival and invite relatives and neighbors to come see — a public announcement of a private joy. The modern festival began in 2003 as a town-revival project, but the form it revives is the real one, remembered house by house. Some dolls date to the Edo period; others were made of paper last month by the town's kindergartners.

The town rewards slowness: white-walled soy breweries, a merchant house or two open to visitors, the smell of moromi in the lanes. JR Hiketa Station is a few minutes' walk from the townscape, about an hour from Takamatsu on the Kotoku Line. Kagawa's udon can wait an afternoon. The dolls, and the sentiment behind them — please, come look at her — cannot; they are out for only a week or so a year.