Festival Location: Okamaya, Japan

Festival Type(s): Bizarre Festivals, Nude Festivals | Naked Events, Traditional Festivals

Naked Men Festival - Hadaka Matsuri

By: © Michael J. Rosen 2009

"Tattoos Bring Everyone Bad Luck."

- World Events Guide

Another of Japan's naked festivals, the hadaka at Saidaiji Temple in Okamaya is, once again, all about luck. Except, instead of sharing good fortune, for one night, every February, 10,000 tattoo-less men gather at the Buddhist temple to fight for it: One of two sacred sticks (shingi) said to guarantee luck for the possessor. (The last sticks on record as creating such fanaticism were ones Ringo Starr threw into a mob of teenage girls.)

Participants change in a dressing tent, where "volunteers" spend hours giving wedgies to all the men. The loincloth (fundoshi) is so tightly secured around the waist and between the buttocks that there's little chance of donning the requisite socks (tabi) if you'd forgotten them.

The 500-year-old tradition is said to date back to times when priests, after the completion of ascetic training at the temple, received paper amulets (Go-o) as a token of their accomplishment. Later, at festivals held on the temple grounds, priests began distributing the symbolic talismans to worshipers. Annually, as the crowds grew larger and the amulets more lucky, apparently, the crowds became more and more aggressive in trying to obtain the papers. Over the years, folks realized that a pair of sticks was less like to tear than paper.

Today, wrestling for the shingi is preceded by a night of festivities - a mob of boys wrestle for rice cakes (mochi, which are never apple cinnamon or cheddar cheese), fireworks explode (probably to a patriotic soundtrack featuring the Japanese equivalent of Bruce Springsteen), and competitors ritually cleanse themselves in the nearby Yoshi River, despite the February temperature, which hovers around freezing. Yes, a few cups of warm sake helps.

Participants then run laps around the temple to visit the different Buddhist deities before entering the main room to jockey for the best positions. At midnight, the lights go off and the shingi are tossed into the crowd, where, for exactly one hour, the horde jostles for the holy sticks, all the while chanting the traditional, "Wasshoi! Wasshoi! Wasshoi!" - the Japanese equivalent of "Heave ho!" Some duck under people's legs. Some climb over others' heads. Some men work together in teams; it's easy to imagine them drawing up the X's and O's of their strategy. (Try not to imagine John Madden in a loincloth.) Some offer bribes to fellow competitors: "Fifty-five hundred yen? Sure that'll get me a kid's pass to Tokyo Disneyland, but..." Many end up bruised or bloodied.

At the end of the melee, any man who managed to thrust a shingi into a wooden box full of rice (masu) is said to be the luckiest in Japan. And the luck spreads! A pregnant woman who wraps herself in a festival-worn fundoshi will give birth to a healthy child. A field will yield a bountiful harvest if the dirt tracked into the temple is sprinkled there. And, despite the countless germs that an hour's worth of bumping, wrestling, and "ritual cleansing" in a frigid river provides, 10,000 participants are guaranteed a year without a cold.

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Naked Men Festival Dates and Location

The Hadaka Matsuri is held at the Saidaiji Temple in Okamaya, Japan each February.

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