Hadaka Matsuri AKA The Naked Man Festival

I'm ill at the moment. Ever since the Hadaka Matsuri in fact! So, I'm just going to copy and paste today's entry from my blog:

The Hadaka Matsuri is a famous festival held in a few places in Japan, Saidaiji in Okayama being one of them, and it's only for men. And they're naked (well, almost). The Japanese don't see nakedness as embarrassing, they see our bodies as sacred, and getting naked is about as normal as throwing out the garbage. As long as you do it in the right place!

The Hadaka Matsuri is supposed to bring on a good harvest for the following year. When it first started, priests used to throw paper talismans out into the crowd of sweaty, half-naked men. Nowadays, they use "Shingi", AKA sacred wands, AKA sticks. These sticks bring the winner a year's worth of good luck, and sometimes a big cash prize! They throw out a number of Shingi, some real, some fake, and then all chaos ensues.

Before all that though, the men, wearing nothing but a "fundoshi" (loincloth) and "tabi" (special socks), run around the temple shouting "Washoi, washoi!" in a very jovial manner. They run into a freezing cold pool of water, to purify themselves, and do the rounds once more. Then they pile into the temple, and that's where all joviality ends.

The men will stop at nothing to get their hands on the shingi. They'll hit, push and throw anyone getting in their way. Some men form a team and work together, ducking and diving between legs, creating a human wall so nobody can get past. The crowd of men in the middle sway to and fro from the sheer force of body mass pushing against each other. There were many injuries, and I was singularly impressed with how they got the injured men out. The policemen, wearing dark robes, would pile into the crowd in two's, not unlike Noah's Ark. Then they would separate, creating a gap, where they would drag the injured party out. When all the men started clapping, you knew they were out, and everyone got back to business.

At midnight, the lights go out, and darkness swallows every inch of the temple grounds. The sticks are dropped, and for about 5 minutes or so, through the hundreds of camera flashes encompassing the temple, you can see men kicking and punching, men falling down the steps, all trying to get to the sticks. It's brutal. And then, it's over. And everyone goes home to nurse their bruises or hangovers, and sometimes both.


And if you'd like to check out more pictures from the event, they're here.