A Naked Festival of Purity

The air is brisk and chilly. A gelid gust rushes by us and I burrow deeper into my scarf. The normally darkened side streets of Saidaiji, Okayama are lit up with cheery red paper lanterns and steaming food stalls. Shopkeepers emerge from their stores, wiping their hands on their aprons, staying open past their normal closing time of six PM. My ears catch whispers of chanting and manly roars not too far away. My eyes grow wide taking in the luminous fireworks that explode off in the distance. And my legs, naturally, hasten towards both these alluring things.

I turn the corner to receive an eyeful. Thirty Japanese men of varying ages are lined up neatly in two lines like schoolchildren. From a distance one might think he or she is watching all the Baby Tiny Toons characters happily waddling around in their nappies. And suddenly, despite my prior whinging about the cold, I suddenly feel very, very warm. They are wearing nothing but fundoshi, what a common person might call a nappy or a diaper. What is really nothing more than a narrow strip of white cloth that is wrapped around the lower abdomen, twirled between the legs and tightly lodged between the ass cheeks. The men cheer upon seeing they have an audience. TV cameras are thrust in their faces (and their rears), and they begin chanting, “Yooooo-sha! Yooooo-sha! Yooooooo-sha!” Then, their pale, nigh on-naked bodies go bounding on into the cold, long night.

It’s naked matsuri time. Another crapulous festival of Japan.

Known as the Hadaka Matsuri, this festival of loins and nakedness is a tine for purification. What could be more pure than scantily clad men running amok in the streets, thongs rammed up their arses, beating each other senseless for sticks worth ten thousand dollars? Although when asked the point of the festival, a legitimate Japanese declared, very matter-of-factly that the crux of the festival was not purification but “Nakedness,” as if the answer was obvious.

We hasten after the various teams of men. Their gleaming white asses provide beacons of light into the darkness. They keep time with each other, chanting as they go. They suddenly halt in front of a series of shops. Locals rush out with bottles and buckets of water, the contents of which are tossed on the Nigh-Naked Men in an attempt to further purify them. They howl and shake it off, completely inebriated. Seeing cameras, they cheer and grin wildly into the lenses.

And they are off again. The police clear the way for the Nigh-Naked Men, pushing lowly pedestrians and spectators out of the way. Feet covered only with tabi (essentially socks), they go padding down the street huddled together, arm over back, cheeks and nipples Rudolf red from the cutting cold. Eventually the teams make it through the winding, narrow streets to the temple grounds. There, they parade through the crowds, circling the main temple until it is time to enter. Their hair is slick from water and sweat, their backs are steaming from body heat and purification water, their eyes are wild with the gambare spirit.

And then there are the social studies and geography schoolteachers who got roped into participating. They lag towards the back of the procession, wire-rimmed glasses steamed up, thin shoulders sagging, eyes brimming full of woeful resignation that they just might die of hypothermia tonight.

And then there are the seasoned veterans. The old, battle-scared warhorses who have betrayed all common sense for one winter night every year, have decades and decades of soiled brown fundoshis with hanko-ed seals of approval on the crotch showcased in glass cases at home. They walk the streets calmly. There will be no chanting, no huddling, no communal warmth, no shuddering, no smiles. They stride through the streets, arms folded tightly in front of them, eyes narrowly focused on the horizon.

And then there are the foreigners. In small groups of seven or eight they go bellowing and cheering around the grounds as thought it were at a Linkin’ Park concert at Jones Beach. Seemingly, some of them have not mastered numbers in Japanese as their fundoshi are ill-sized, making the Hadaka masturi more naked than ever. One foreigner is running around on his own. He jets through people stopping to randomly hug, in all his naked-glory, another random fully clothed foreigner he has happened to spot in the crowd. The poor soul stands there as the drunken mess suffocates him in an iron death grip before he runs away giggling ferociously.

Finally all the groups have gathered in the main temple area. The spectators are hustled out and told to go to their viewing positions up on the hill that smiles down onto the temple. From the hill the temple appears full of a flesh-colored writhing mass, punctuated with the occasional bright white Ts of the fundoshi. Bright red lights shine down upon the hundreds and hundreds of men. Dozen upon dozen of men continue to file in from the eastern and western gates, shoving themselves into the throng, throwing their arms up towards the heavens waiting for the sacred sticks to be dropped into the sea of men. Steam rises from the middle of the horde, and as we shove our hands in our pockets, and pull our hats down over our ears, a part of us can’t help but be envious at how warm they must all be. But that envy is fleeting.

A Japanese man next to me shows me his cell phone. “ONE MINUTE!” he says excitedly and grins at me. Midnight strikes. The lights go out. Hell breaks loose in front of us.

It’s a scene from Dante’s Inferno. Three sticks are dropped from above and the raw battle begins. Men begin climbing along the back wall of the temple, attempting to get closer to the middle action. Men along the edges fold their arms to their chests to keep warm and waver there precariously. The air is full of arms and hands. The temple stairs are full of filled fundoshis. And the sticks are nowhere to be found. Undoubtedly the teams have premeditated strategies in mind. Men are placed on the outskirts on purpose, awaiting the sticks to fall into their hands. While the innermost part of the temple appears to have the most violent action, it is the outer rims that are actually the most dangerous.

A gasp of horror erupts from the crowd on the hill as a wave ripples through the flesh sea before us. Men have fallen from the main ledge of the temple and are tumbling down the stairs, causing a chain reaction to bring everyone else down with them. But their reaction time is quick and many are up and on their feet, climbing back into the mess before we have time to feel too bad for them. Bright red lights shine down from temple beams upon those behaving ‘improperly,’ however that may be. Police occasionally rush into the crowd, forming a chain of men and pulling out offenders. Cheers go up every now and again. And it is a wonder that more people aren’t killed.

Someone must have won. Someone must have found the sacred sticks and made it out the temple gates to successfully plant them in the ground. And that lucky someone would be blessed with a full year of good luck. Which will undoubtedly come in handy when a) trying to find their digits and extremities that have frozen, shriveled up and fallen off during the festival and b) attempting to remove the white cloth lodged deep within their bottoms.

insane

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Published:
2.18.08 / 1pm
Category:
amusing incidents, what i call life, culture, unschoolish