Japan Fertility Festival
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Japan Fertility Festival
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evAuxX3MXso
If you're closer to central Japan, you could join the fertility festival that takes place in Komaki, a city just north of Nagoya in Aichi Prefecture. The Honen Matsuri ( honen means prosperous year) is held every March 15 as a way to welcome spring and new life. And what better way to symbolize fertility than with a 2.5-meter-long (96 in) wooden phallus?
The festival begins around 10 a.m. at Tagata Shrine, though the main member won't be present yet. Rather, it starts at a hilltop shrine called Shinmei-sha in even-numbered years, or Kumano-sha in odd-numbered years, and is carried to Tagata Shrine beginning at 2 p.m. after receiving blessings from priests.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLNRTT2-brw
Once the mikoshi gets to the shrine, the festival is concluded with a mochi nage , or rice cake toss. Officials of the festival throw solid mochi rice cakes to the crowd, who joyously try to catch them. If you're able to join this festival, be sure to look up when the mochi is being thrown, as they're rock hard and can actually cause injury.
Like the Kanamara Festival, this event seems to be incredibly popular for foreigners and travelers, but locals surely enjoy the mochi throws and the all-you-can-drink sake that's offered to participants before the whole thing wraps up around 4:30 p.m. Luckily, for those who still want to party, the shrine is very close to a large liquor store and many attendees head across the street to continue the festivities.
http://www.japaoemfoco.com/hime-no-miya-e-hounen-matsuri-festivais-da-fertilidade/
Celebrating the ladies, the Oagata Shrine Honen-sai is held in Inuyama City on the closest Sunday before March 15. While this is not as well known as the penis festivals, the vagina reigns here as the symbol of an abundant harvest. Oagata Shrine was built in 1661 and the goddess enshrined there, Tamahime-no-mikoto, is said to bless couples with a successful childbirth. Unsurprisingly, Oagata Shrine is the sister shrine to Tagata Shrine, and these two festivals are generally promoted together.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XERmFDLndgc&feature=youtu.be
While the three festivals listed above are the most famous, there are other fertility festivals to be found around the country:
Onda Matsuri: Nara Prefecture, held on the first Sunday in February
Ometsuki Matsuri: Miyagi Prefecture, held annually January 24 (seen above)
Konsei Matsuri: Iwate Prefecture, held annually April 29
Hodare Matsuri Niigata Prefecture, held on the second Sunday in March
So if you like your festivals a little risqué, you've got plenty to choose from!
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A festival to fight AIDS and raise money for HIV research, it also draws couples looking for good fertility luck, a large gay/lesbian crowd and people who worship the Phallus. A group of men carrying on their shoulders a large, pink phallus and it bobs up and down to their rhythmic chants.
Sounds bizarre and interesting at the same time, well, that’s the Japanese fertility festival for you. Also known as the Kanamara Matsuri (Festival of the Steel Phallus), it takes place at the Kanamara shrine in Kawasaki in beginning of April every year. There is no shame in holding a festival about sex even at religious venues.
As the name suggests, the male reproductive organ forms the central theme of the event and it reflects everywhere; from illustrations, candies, carved vegetables to decorations etc.
It started way back during Japan’s Edo period (1603-1867) when Kawasaki prostitutes use to pray for protection against sexually transmitted diseases (especially against syphilis) and also prosperity in their business. When Japan’s famous flowers bloom during spring, they would carry an image of the phallus around the streets.
With the spread of syphilis now curbed, the festival has evolved into generating money for HIV research, of course, with the fun factor as well.
A similar festival is, Honen Matsuri, celebrated to ensure bountiful harvests and plenty of offspring in the coming years –
There are transvestites parading through the streets carrying a mikoshi (portable shrine) with a humongous pink phallus on top. Age no bar, you will find, grandmas nibbling on carnal candy and replicas of sweetmeat of this stupendous phallus (seen in the above video).
Locals also carve penises out of radish, which are auctioned in the Kanamara shrine. Children and young women sit on penis-shaped seesaws for good luck and fertility blessings. In the shrine, there is also a neat display of penises carved from wood, paintings of traditionally-clad Japanese engaged in copulation.
This shows the Japanese religions and culture have not left out sexuality just like Shaivism in India. While Kanamara Matsuri makes an interesting festival.
I found your site on stumbleupon and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you down the road!
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CONTENT WARNING: This post contains depictions of human genitalia
This post is the last in a series of four about our latest trip to Japan. It’s
about the annual fertility festival in Japan called
Hōnensai (豊年祭) or Hōnen
Matsuri.
While we were planning this trip, my wife and I noticed that it happened to
coincide with Honen Matsuri. I had celebrated new years in Tokyo some time back,
but neither of us had participated in a traditional Japanese festival. We
decided to plan our whole trip around it.
The festival occurs every March 15th in
Komaki , a small town about one hour
north of Nagoya.
It’s centered around the Tagata Shrine. Upon stepping foot on the shrine
grounds, it became apparent to us that it’s not an ordinary shrine. There are
phallic representations everywhere. Even the
Suzu bell takes a phallic shape.
As I describe this festival, depending on your background, it may seem bizarre.
Keep in mind that cultural context is critical. This festival is a
family-friendly event that attracts people of all ages and genders.
That family-friendly atmosphere starts with the street vendors on the festival
grounds. Many sell typical Japanese street fare like yakisoba (stir-fried
noodles), okonomiyaki (savory pancake), and ikayaki (grilled squid). The
interesting ones sell candies, chocolate-covered bananas,
imagawayaki , and souvenir trinkets
all shaped like both female and male genitalia.
I loved seeing people of all ages walking around and eating penis-shaped treats.
It really put to rest any chance of the festival being interpreted as sexual in
nature.
Some festival-goers even dressed up in costumes and proudly posed for photos and
selfies.
The grocery store next door to the shrine closes off their parking lot every
year. The staff roll-out carts of milk crates and transform the lot into a
makeshift picnic area.
At 10am in the morning, the procession begins in the Tagata Shrine. Volunteers
hand out free sake and dried konbu (edible kelp) to everyone along the parade
route.
The main festivities, however, don’t start until later in the day. About a ten
minute walk from the Tagata Shrine in the Kumano Shrine, banners, and
mikoshi (神輿 ) religious palanquins
are set out in preparation.
Then, at 2pm, the main procession begins moving from the Kumano Shrine to the
Tagata Shrine.
Priests salt the road the purify the path that the palanquin bearers before them
will take.
Many of the participants in the procession wear traditional costumes, like this
elaborate Tengu costume.
The star of the procession is the giant wooden phallus carried in its own
mikoshi. The mikoshi is carried by groups of 42-year old men. It’s thought that
42 is an unlucky age and that carrying the giant phallus in the procession will
ward off bad luck.
Each year, a slightly larger new wooden phallus is carved from a cypress trunk.
They are nearly 3 meters long each and weigh more than 250 kilograms. Carrying
the palanquin looked like hard work, especially considering that they stop every
5 minutes or so and spin the whole structure very briskly in place.
Once the giant phallus arrives in the shrine, it is spun a few more times as a
large group of visitors watch on. Then it is taken inside the shrine to compare
with last year’s.
Around 3:30pm, a crowd starts to gather in an open square at the base of a
raised platform for the final event of the day. An announcer warns all children,
eyeglass wearers, and the elderly to leave the area because of the physical
danger of the next ceremony. The elderly around us ignored the instructions and
stayed. A line of public safety officers donning helmets lined the platform to
keep us at a safe distance from the platform.
You see, the final ceremony of the day is Mochinage .
It’s a tradition that used to be quite prevalent in Japan to commemorate
religious holidays and even the construction of new houses. During mochinage,
people throw mochi from either a raised platform or the second floor of a
building at neighbors or visitors below. Mind you, these aren’t the soft,
colorful mochi that many of you may be picturing. They’re instead hard and feel
about as dense as baseballs.
At Honen Matsuri, local dignitaries line up behind barrels of mochi that were
brought to the shrine in the procession earlier in the day. As a priest thanks
everyone for coming and makes a prayer over the loudspeaker, the dignitaries
start grabbing handfuls of mochi. Then, when the priest gives the cue to start,
the chaos begins.
Mochi starts raining down on our heads while everyone frantically tries to reach
for them. Being used to orderly crowds in Japan, it was pretty surprising how
violent it got at times with people getting pushed and falling to the ground.
There is a short break to allow everyone to gather themselves before another
wave of mochi throwing.
Fortunately for me, I am quite a bit taller than the average Japanese person and
have long arms as well. I was able to grab three by the end of the roughly 15
minutes it took for the mochi to run out.
As the festival wound down, we saw attendees, both visitors and locals alike,
proudly sharing the mochi they had caught. I noticed that most people in my
generation or younger were satisfied with catching just one or two.
The elderly, however, were clearly playing a different game and collected far
more. I even saw some of them diving to catch mochi that had fallen on the
ground. The man below coolly walked away with more than a dozen.
Thanks to Q for reading drafts of this.
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June 21, 2022 0
"You cannot buy the Revolution. You cannot make the Revolution. You can only be the Revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is...
“A mood of universal destruction and renewal has set its mark on our age. This mood makes itself felt everywhere, politically, socially, and philosophically....
Bhavika is a nature-lover, aspiring yogini, traveler and co-founder of Fractal Enlightenment, who strives to help fellow beings reconnect with nature and their true selves. Thank you for being part of this journey.
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