JAPAN – Women will be allowed to participate in Japan‘s ‘naked man’ festival next month for the first time in its 1,250-year history.
A group of 40 local women in Inazawa, in the country’s Aichi prefecture, will join the annual Hadaka Matsuri at the Konomiya shrine after petitioning organisers.
About the Event
The event sees thousands of men strip down to loincloths and clash in a huge scrum as they fight to touch a completely naked man who is designated the shin-otoko or ‘god man’, in the hope that it will bring them good fortune for the new year.
Women will participate in the festival’s naoizasa ritual, which sees participants carry bamboo grass wrapped in cloth into the shrine grounds.
But they will remain full clothed and will not be partaking in the crush of near-naked bodies the historic event is famous for.
People Like the Development
Activists have hailed the move as a welcome step forward for gender equality, albeit one which is ‘long overdue’.
Mitsugu Katayama, an official on the festival’s organising committee, told the South China Morning Post: ‘We have not been able to hold the festival like we used to for the past three years because of the pandemic and, in the time, we received a lot of requests from women in the town to take part.’
He added that while there was no active ban on women taking part in the past, they had opted not to join in with the festivities.
The festival is a celebration of harvest, prosperity and fertility, and is usually held in February.
Number of People That Will Take Part
Officials say some 10,000 people are expected to take part at this year’s event, which will kick off at around 3pm on February 22.
Men who take part in the main event wear minimal clothing, donning nothing more than bandanas, a white Japanese loincloth called a fundoshi and a pair of white socks called tabi.
They parade through the town, throwing buckets of icy water over each other and swigging sake – Japanese rice wine – to stay warm.
