About 10,000 Japanese men clad only in loincloths on Saturday braved freezing temperatures to pack into a temple and scramble in the dark for lucky wooden talismans tossed into the crowd, in a ritual that dates back five centuries.
The highlight of the raucous day-long Hadaka Matsuri festival came at 10pm, when the lights went out and a priest threw bundles of twigs and two lucky sticks, each about 20cm long, among the participants.
That set off a 30-minute tussle for the sticks, coveted as symbols of good fortune and prosperity, although most men escaped with just a few cuts and bruises, in contrast to past occasions, when some have been crushed to death.
Photo: Reuters
“Once a year, at the coldest time in February, we wrap ourselves in just a loincloth to be a man,” said 55-year-old Yasuhiko Tokuyama, the president of a regional electronics firm. “That’s the significance of this event and why I continue to participate.”
Plenty of sake and beer was sold outside the temple to warm the revelers, but a purifying plunge into pools of cold water before the start of the festival was a shock to the system for most.
The annual celebration at the Saidaiji Kannonin Temple in Okayama has its roots in a competition to grab paper talismans that dates back more than 500 years, but as its popularity grew, the paper talismans began to rip, as did the clothes of the rising number of participants, so wooden sticks were adopted and garments discarded.
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