Other talismanic ningyo exist--for example, a simple cloth figure (cotton ball in a hanky) tied to a door lintel as a rain-charm. 

It seems that certain dolls or figures are also fertility offerings, or memorials for a dead child. The pair of hollow boxes in the shape of dogs belonging to a young woman, and which were displayed with the hina dolls,  were burned when she married. Kokeshi dolls seem to have had a purpose as a memorial of a miscarriage or abortion.

Dolls may also be burned to signify the destruction of a year's sins and follies. Daruma  are purchased at the new year and burned at the end of the year; Daruma has the additional function of assisting the owner with crops or undertakings, under pain of not getting his two eyes painted in. 

Hina dolls and other types are also offered at a shrine or burned ceremonially at temples and shrines. This may be viewed as the release of a doll's soul or spiritual power when it is no longer needed or wanted.

 See the next listing for dolls sold at shrines by the monks, often to be used as offerings.

Girls' Day, which evidently replaced the old day of personal purification by dolls, was established in the 17th century, and is also the Peach Festival (Momo no sekku). Ironically, because of the adoption of the Western calendar in the 19th century, the day of the festival no longer quite coincides with the blooming of peach trees, and the Iris festival no longer has its "natural" meaning either.

Boys' Day was the Iris Festival (Tango no sekku), when the iris was used to purify houses in particular, and the bladelike leaves of the iris seem to have inspired sword-fighting games and the popularity of warrior dolls. However, the typical display for this day, also called Flag Day, is the flying of a carp banner (koi nobori) for each male child in the house. The systematic display of warrior dolls, imitating the Girls' Day tiers, along with other military items and models, was secondary. Nowadays there are gogatsu-ningyo (iris dolls) representing warriors as children. 

Hagoita (battledores), decorated with oshi-e-ningyo (padded dolls) and daruma dolls are associated with the New Year festival.

Some communities nowadays have communal displays of hina dolls on Girls' Day, either collecting many tiered sets of dolls in one place or presenting a live display.

The creation of kiku-ningyo or dolls made out of chrysanthemums is by its nature public and autumnal.

One type of doll which seems to have originated for gift-giving is the gosho or "palace" doll, a gift from the emperor, made in his capital, Kyoto.  In its basic form it represents an extremely chubby, white-skinned baby boy. In the days of the shoguns, these dolls might be given as gifts to aristocratic men, perhaps because they suggest fertility in the male line. The popularity of these large white dolls probably led to the perfection of the gofun lacquer technique, used in all dolls to suggest an aristocratic pallor. 

A variation of the gosho developed whic could be a  play doll with removable clothes; separately in Edo (Tokyo) dollmakers developed the more mobile ichimatsu doll, an appropriate gift for a child or a beloved courtesan. 

In the great U.S.-Japan Friendship Doll exchange of 1927-29, the gift of blue-eyed American play dolls to Japanese children was reciprocated by the creation of 58 very large ichimatsu dolls, the Torei Ningyo or Ambassador Dolls, created especially for this purpose, and eventually displayed publicly in museums in the U.S. to commemorate the international  friendship and hopes for peace of children.

A special category would be theatrical dolls, closely allied to the karakuri and puppets which they evoke. The carved Nara dolls and others which represent Noh characters, the Takeda dolls of the Edo period wich combine complex construction and dramatic poses, the little tableaux recalling scenes from Noh or Kabuki or the myriad dolls representing festival dancers--the "use" of all these dolls would seem to be the recollection of a particular performance.

Twentieth-century dolls designed with American travellers (in particular) in mind often extend the souvenir quality of the theatrical dolls, evoking the geisha and maiko or Kabuki performers seen in the capital. Since foreigners love to collect sets, such dolls might take a wide variety of forms (e.g. the Hakata dolls representing so many different trades, stages of life, etc.). 

The Japanese skill with folded paper leads to an elaborate array of possible paper dolls, from a few simple folds to complex textured-washi dolls. Kimekomi dollmaking is easily learned, though the process of producing a doll even from a kit is long and requires skill; oshi-e, or the making of dolls or images from padded cloth shapes, is similarly challenging to master. The sakura dolls, made from kits including the mask-face and wired arms, allow full expression of the maker's sense of color and design.

The protective dolls, the hoko and the amagatsu, were to be destroyed when a child reached a certain age. However, until then they must have satisfied an urge to cuddle or dress up a human-like figure.

At some point in the mid or late18th century there developed a doll type which is large, the size of a live baby, and whose jointed limbs allow it to be dressed and undressed easily, and posed. This is the ichimatsu doll. It was probably at first a plaything for women and children of the wealthiest classes, including geisha; there are a number of touching woodblock images of young girls sold into houses of pleasure, cuddling dolls of this type. In the 19th and 20th centuries, such dolls might be made in any size from 5  up to about 32 inches, boy and girl, baby or older child or adult; and they became a popular export item.  Around the turn of the century Americans observed small Japanese children carrying dolls on their back, practicing for the time when they would be carrying a small sister or brother.