The Hadaka Matsuri is a traditional Shinto (the native Japanese religion) festival in which almost-naked men fight for a magic stick, called a shingi. The man who touches the stick is guaranteed good luck for the entire year, so it's a pretty big deal. I think the date of the festival was originally determined by the lunar calendar, but now it's set as the third Saturday in February. The festival is celebrated at a few different temples in different parts of Japan, but one of the biggest celebrations is in the town of Saidaiji, just twenty minutes from where we live.
The main event doesn't take place until midnight, but in the afternoon and evening there are other activities, including an all-female taiko drumming group performance, fireworks, and a contest where little boys compete for rice cakes or treasure tubes. Unfortunately we missed all of that because most people were working in the daytime, so we got to Saidaiji around ten. The streets leading up to the temple are all lined with food vendors and they are absolutely jam-packed because it's a small town and ten or fifteen thousand people go to see the festival every year. Up until about ten thirty anyone is allowed to look at the temple but after that they make an announcement (in English and Japanese, lest there be any confusion) that only naked men are allowed in the temple. It's easy to get swept up in the excitement of the event, and all four of the men in our group ended up participating, even though only one of them had planned to partake!
Any man is allowed to participate, all you do is go to the changing tents and buy the requisite outfit: fundoshi, which is the loincloth that sumo wrestlers wear, and tabi socks, which are a bit like slipper socks, I guess. After changing you have to run through some sacred pools to purify yourself and stop to pray on your way to the temple. The temple gets more and more crowded and then finally at midnight they turn off the lights and a priest throws the shingi into the center of the crowd. After that it's all over in about five minutes. No one I know has ever even seen the shingi, much less touched it, and I think that's partly because some of the Japanese teams have 30 or 40 men working together and strategies to make sure they have a good chance.
I hope you enjoy the pictures, I didn't have much luck getting good shots because it was dark and crowded. The first shot is a food vendor on the road leading to the temple, then a shot of the temple around 11 when the naked men were starting to gather, and finally a fundoshi-clad man on the street after the festival.
I've only got one more week in Japan and then I'll be heading home, so I'll probably be doing one more post. Thanks for reading!
Catie
