Last night I went to Saidaiji-eyo, an ancient Japanese holy tradition that is also known as Hadaka Matsuri, or more recently – the naked man festival. Thousands of men wearing loincloths descend on the Saidaiji temple for a purification ceremony/contest that involves them wading into the freezing water of a temple pool near the river, then praying at the shrine before marching around the temple, under some ropes and then back into the water to repeat the praying and marching one more time. Once this has been completed the men start to gather in groups on the front of the temple waiting for midnight, when the lights are turned out and the priests throw shinji sticks into the crowd. The men who manage to grab the sticks and make it out of the temple are said to be guaranteed good fortune for the coming year. Over the years the competition has become quite organised, with groups of men developing strategies on how best to make sure that one of their number is the man; so that as you watch the writhing mass of bodies that are pressing themselves up the temple steps and into the main part of the building it starts to look like some weird combination of sumo and american football, only played by hundreds of teams on a pitch about the size of a tennis court.
The first groups of men were starting the washing and marching when I turned up at about 9pm, but it wasn’t until about 11:00 that people started to mass on the temple and then there was still an hour of waiting while the build up commenced. As more and more bodies threw themselves in the crowd would bulge, and teeter on the edge of falling down the steps. People would faint, and the massed ranks of the security teams would surge into the crowds leaving a corridor of guards to pull the unfortunate to safety. Some of the competitors were so drunk that their friends were having to hold them up, despite the warnings being given out in English about how no naked men were allowed to take part who were under the influence of liqour. Although most people were wearing white loincloths there were a few people to be spotted wearing black ones, and the considered opinion of people in the crowd seemed to be that they were yakuza! This was serious stuff, and dangerous at that. Quite a few drunken gaijin (foreigners) were joining in as the night progressed, but this was not a Japanese tradition I’d want to be a part of – and I very much doubt that my insurance covers me for acts of lunacy!
So the crowd gathered, and security dived in every once in a while, and the spectators stood in their spots for hours waiting until finally it was midnight – the lights went out and the naked men roared as the sticks were thrown in, and then… well, I have no idea! The sticks seemed to leave the temple pretty quickly, and bubbles of activity spilled out of the temple with them as teams protected their man, or sought to get the sticks off someone else. Scuffles broke out amongst the naked men, and also in the crowd of spectators. Within five minutes it appeared to be over, or to at least to have reached the point where making sense of anything going on was impossible. And that was that – I pushed my way out and followed the stream of other people leaving, naked men running to the changing areas around us, and made my back to the station and back to my warm hotel room in Okayama, not entirely sure what to make of the evening!
I’ve put some blurry photos of the whole thing here. Ladies of a sensitive disposition be warned, buttocks are visible!