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Japan's Raucous 'Naked' Festival Draws 10,000 Men To Saidaiji Temple

Braving freezing temperatures, the loincloth-clad men participated in a prosperity rite during the day-long "Hadaka Matsuri" festival.
Men dressed in loincloths prepare to snatch a wooden stick called "shingi" tossed by the priest during a naked festival at Saidaiji Temple in Okayama, Japan, on February 15, 2020.
Kim Kyung Hoon / Reuters
Men dressed in loincloths prepare to snatch a wooden stick called "shingi" tossed by the priest during a naked festival at Saidaiji Temple in Okayama, Japan, on February 15, 2020.

OKAYAMA, Japan (Reuters) ― About 10,000 Japanese men clad only in loincloths braved freezing temperatures at the weekend 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 10 p.m. on Saturday, when the lights went out and a priest threw bundles of twigs and two lucky sticks, each about 8 inches 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.

The men must walk in a purification pool before entering the temple building.
Kim Kyung Hoon /Reuters
The men must walk in a purification pool before entering the temple building.

“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.”

Kim Kyung Hoon/Reuters
Kim Kyung Hoon/Reuters

Plenty of sake and beer is 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 the southern city of 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 that eventually wooden sticks were adopted and garments discarded.

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This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost India, which closed in 2020. Some features are no longer enabled. If you have questions or concerns about this article, please contact indiasupport@huffpost.com.