Japan Phallic Festival

Japan Phallic Festival
"A hundred thousand revelers come here to celebrate one thing: the male organ."
Every year on the first Sunday of April in Kawasaki, Japan, one might cross paths with a peculiar sight — a succession of enormous erect penises parading down the street under the strength of men in traditional female garb.
This year, photographer B.A. Van Sise was in attendance of the annual Festival of the Steel Phallus , a regional tradition dating back to the 17th century that today serves as a platform for the benefit of HIV research. Here, Van Sise shares his experience and some of the history behind what is perhaps the most phallic festival in the world.
Early April in Kawasaki, Japan, is set aside for the Kanamara Matsuri, or the festival of the steel phallus, in which a hundred thousand revelers come here to celebrate one thing: the male organ. Home to the Kanayama Jinja Shrine, Kawasaki, southwest of Tokyo, has been closely tied to the male anatomy for centuries, due to a persistent local legend, so its famed Shinto shrine to the relic of a steel phallus was, well, erected.
Legend holds that a jealous, red-faced, sharped-tooth demon hid in the vagina of a goddess and then bit off, to their great surprise, the penises of her first two husbands. History forgets to mention why she failed to warn the second guy.
Finally a third, more determined suitor, a blacksmith, created an iron phallus that broke the demon's teeth; the man won over the beautiful woman while the demon presumably returned back to the ether to receive quite the lecture from his orthodontist.
The shrine is humble but has stood the test of time. Made of old stone and boasting a small but pretty network of traditional orange torii gates, it was built in roughly 698 CE — but is now more famously home to the festival — in prim and proper Japan, an unusual but charming celebration of the sacred and the profane.
While beautifully frocked Shinto priests in the shrine celebrate the thousands-year-old god, long worshiped by prostitutes fearing disease and pilgrims worried for their fertility, a different sort of celebration is going on outside, as tens, if not hundreds of thousands of partiers take to the streets.
Revelers carry penis lollipops (funny to look at, but not particularly tasty), phallic vegetables, and enough whimsical toys to stock a year's worth of Las Vegas bachelorette parties. They enjoy them all while snapping not-quite-ready-for-Instagram selfies and watching a parade of all of Kawasaki's manliest men, struggling to carry a bunch of giant junk through the street.
Local families and businesses work for months to make the enormous genitals carried on the shoulders of teams of men through Kawasaki's tight streets. Three, in total, are carried around town; two are of metal and one, true to Japan's contemporary anime-loving culture, is of the cheery, bubblegum-hued cartoon variety, and lofted by 18 fellows wearing glitter and fantastic makeup.
For the prudish, it might be hard to see, but it does have its benefits: These days, sales from the festival — penis clothing, candy, food, toys — rake in gobs of money every year, put duly to work toward HIV research.
This year marks a half century for the festival in its modern form. Visitors wanting to see it themselves, and unafraid to face the throbbing masses, can make it to Kawasaki from Tokyo in an easy day trip on the first Sunday of April, any year, and see for themselves the giant phalluses of Kawasaki — and the many men who get them up.
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B.A. Van Sise is a New York-based portrait and features photographer.

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More formally known as the Festival of the Steel Phallus, Kanamara Matsuri is celebrated annually on the first Sunday in April, at Kanayama Shrine in Kawasaki, just south of Tokyo. Its origins can be traced back to an ancient Japanese legend. As the story goes, a vicious demon hid inside the vagina of a young woman after falling in love with her.
The Shinto Kanamara Matsuri (かなまら祭り, " Festival of the Steel Phallus ") is an annual Japanese festival held each spring at the Kanayama Shrine (金山神社, Kanayama-jinja) in Kawasaki, Japan . The exact dates vary: the main festivities fall on the first Sunday in April.
Here, Van Sise shares his experience and some of the history behind what is perhaps the most phallic festival in the world. Early April in Kawasaki, Japan , is set aside for the Kanamara Matsuri, or the festival of the steel phallus, in which a hundred thousand revelers come here to celebrate one thing: the male organ.
The Kanamara Matsuri (かなまら祭り) also known as " Festival of the Steel Phallus " is a traditional Shinto festival . In recent days it has become a very popular festival in Japan - especially among foreign tourists: It is very crowded and locals told me that every year more and more people come.
The fertility festival held annually on March 15 attracts a lively crowd of both Japanese and foreign visitors. They come to witness a 2.5 meter, approximately 300 kg wooden phallus being carried on a mikoshi (portable shrine), by teams of 12 men, the 1.5 km between Kumano Shrine and Tagata Shrine near Inuyama, just outside Nagoya in Aichi ...
Every year, on the first Sunday of April, thousands of people line the streets of the Japanese city of Kawasaki, south of Tokyo, to celebrate the male genitalia. Welcome to Kanamara Matsuri,...
A trip to Niigata's phallic Shoki Festival Feb. 24, 2020 05:54 am JST 0 Comment By Michael Gakuran NIIGATA Along the Agano river, deep within Niigata Prefecture are several small villages. Each one supposedly participates in maintaining a long religious folk tradition, found dating back to the late Edo period involving deities named Shoki-sama.
The next Kanamara Festival will take place on Sunday, 7 April 2019. So you're probably wondering why the Japanese celebrate the "steel phallus." Well, legend has it that sometime back in the Edo period (1603-1867), there was a sharp-toothed demon who fell in love with a beautiful woman.
Jun 23, 2021 Japan's Penis Festival ・ The Kanamara Festival Has Japanese Traditions, Ceremony, and Phalluses Galore Kanto Culture Tokyo 2021.06.23 Every spring, people gather for the traditional Japanese "Kanamara Festival " to celebrate one thing: the penis. The Kanamara Festival is all about penises. (Yes, penises, genitals, no typos involved!)
The festival takes place near Kawasaki-Daishi, formally known as Heikenji, a Buddhist temple that's quite famous as a popular hatsumode spot (first visit to a temple or shrine of the new year) during New Years. Things seemed a bit calmer here in Kawasaki-Daishi, where they also had a small festival with vendors that sold food, candy, and toys.
The Shinto Kanamara Matsuri is an annual Japanese festival held each spring at the Kanayama Shrine in Kawasaki, Japan. The exact dates vary: the main festivities fall on the first Sunday in April. The phallus, as the central theme of the event, is reflected in illustrations, candy, carved vegetables, decorations, and a mikoshi parade. Wikipedia More at Wikipedia
Observed by: Kanayama shrine, Kawasaki, Japan
last year date: April (. April last year)
next year date: April (. April next year)
+2 years date: April (. April +2 years)
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The Tagata Jinja Hounen Sai (Tagata Jinja Phallic Festival) has grown in popularity over the years. The fertility festival held annually on March 15 attracts a lively crowd of both Japanese and foreign visitors.
They come to witness a 2.5 meter, approximately 300 kg wooden phallus being carried on a mikoshi (portable shrine), by teams of 12 men, the 1.5 km between Kumano Shrine and Tagata Shrine near Inuyama, just outside Nagoya in Aichi Prefecture, central Japan.
Tagata Jinja is believed to date back over 1500 years. It is dedicated to fertility, good harvests, and the natural bounty symbolized by the male phallus. The shrine is not a place of worship of the male member as such, but the natural fecundity, renewal, and growth the erect penis represents.
The shrine holds a number of phallic objects both natural and man-made. These were traditionally lent to individuals attempting to find a spouse or also conceive a child. If the outcome was successful, the ritual objects were returned to the shrine and a new one then made in gratitude by the recipient.
Tagata Jinja abounds with representations of the phallus, even the shrine’s bell is in the shape of a penis. During the year the shrine, located in the nondescript suburb of Komaki, is often visited by young couples who come to pray for the birth of a child.
Each year a new phallus is carved by a local master craftsman from a Japanese cypress tree ( hinoki ). Both the tree and the craftsman undergo various purification rites as the wood is carved over the winter months in readiness for the spring festival.
On the day of the festival, the procession starts from Kumano Shrine at 2 pm. The portable shrine is accompanied by Shinto priests, musicians playing ancient court music, local dignitaries, women carrying smaller wooden phalluses, and loud shouts of “ wa-sha-i ” as the heavy load is carried to its destination. Sake is freely dispensed in paper cups from a sake cart on the way and everyone is invited to touch and in some cases feign to suck the members on display.
The middle-aged Japanese men carrying some of the phalluses obviously get a great kick out of offering the wooden penises to Western women to fondle and caress (it’s their ultimate fantasy!) and the women are unashamedly turned on by the sight of so much hard, though wooden, cock.
The procession reaches Tagata Shrine at about 4 pm for the literal climax of the day’s events. A small portable shrine carries a wooden representation of Takeinadene-no-mikoto , the male deity visiting his female counterpart (and wife) Tamahime-no-mikoto , who is enshrined at Tagata Jinja. Next comes the huge phallus which is placed in the shrine for another year, the old phallus being sold off.
Accompanying the procession is a standard-bearer with a large banner featuring a phallus, musicians, Shinto priests, and miko shrine maidens carrying 60 cm wooden phalluses. There is also a figure wearing a long-nose mask portraying the deity Sarutahiko-no-okami. Also carried along are two sacred trees called sakaki , which used to be torn apart by the crowd at the end of the ceremony to ensure fertility.
The Tagata Jinja Hounen Sai is undoubtedly a fun day out. There are lots of stalls on the grounds selling chocolate-coated bananas, pink sugary phalluses, and the usual beer, fried noodles, fried potatoes, and takoyaki . Visitors can buy the shrine’s ema (votive plaques), carved wooden phalluses, keychains, and other lucky charms to take back home with them as souvenirs.
Also of interest is the nearby Ogata Jinja, where representations of the female vagina can be found.
Tagata Shrine
Aichi, Komaki-shi, Tagata-cho-152
Tel: 0568 76 2906
To get to Tagata Jinja take a Meitetsu train from Nagoya Station or Kanayama Station to Inuyama. Change to a Meitetsu Komaki Line train leaving from platform 3. Go three stops to Tagata Jinja Mae. Turn left out of the station and then left again at the main road. Tagata Jinja is about 400 meters on your right. To reach Kumano Shrine turn right out of Tagata Jinja, cross over the main road and Kumano Jinja is on your left as you climb the hill after crossing over the railway line.
Alternatively, take the Tsurumai Subway Line to Kami Otai. Then change to a Meitetsu Line train to Inuyama and then the Komaki Line to Tagata Jinja Mae.
Ogata (Oh-agata) Shrine (Tel: 0568 67 1017) is a ten-minute walk, turning right out of Gakuden Station on the Meitetsu Komaki Line.

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Every year, on the first Sunday of April, thousands of people line the streets of the Japanese city of Kawasaki, south of Tokyo, to celebrate the male genitalia. Welcome to Kanamara Matsuri, literally translated as the "Festival of the Steel Phallus."
Festival goers indulge in colorful penis-shaped food and memorabilia as portable shrines of three giant phalluses are paraded through the city. There's a black steel phallus, a brown wooden phallus and a bright pink phallus known as "Elizabeth," after the name of a popular Tokyo cross-dressing club that donated the giant sculpture, which is traditionally carried by people in drag.
The Kanayama Shrine, a smaller shrine that honors the gods of mining and blacksmiths within the larger Wakayama Hachimangu, is the revelers' final destination. The atmosphere of the sex-positive, LGBT-inclusive celebration is fun and relaxed, but the festival is deeply embedded with the Shinto religion and also a socially-conscious opportunity to raise funds for research into sexually-transmitted diseases (STDs).
Its origins can be traced back to Japan's Edo Period (1603-1868), a time when Kawasaki was a bustling trade center with a busy nightlife and the Kanayama Shrine became a place of worship for sex workers needing protection from STDs.
The myth surrounding the festival's origin takes an allegorical approach, but it doesn't take too much imagination to discern the moral behind the metaphor. The tale tells the story of a toothed demon who began inhabiting a woman's vagina after she rejected him to marry another man.
The demon twice bit off the husband's penis when the newlyweds tried to consummate the marriage, so the woman went to a blacksmith to forge a steel phallus for her husband to break the demon's teeth, forcing the evil spirit to leave her alone, according to the South China Morning Post.
The tradition of holding a festival in the city celebrating fertility and health was lost in the 1800s, but the shrine's chief priest Hirohiko Nakamura decided to revive it in the early 1970s. What was at first a celebration held at nighttime among a small group of people has now expanded to an internationally-renowned event that gathers as many as 50,000 visitors, The Independent reported in 2017.
Festivals celebrating fertility and safe sex remain poignantly relevant in modern Japan, where birth rates are falling to record lows, and the fight against STIs (sexually transmitted infections) has been a public health concern for more than a decade. In 2004, a medical survey reported in UPI found that one in 10 Japanese high school students, and nearly 24 percent of 16-year-olds, had experienced an STI. Lack of sexual education and reluctance to use condoms were among the factors to blame, according to experts quoted in the BBC at the time.
Ten years later, a U.N. report found that Japan's rates of HIV were falling—but an old disease was making a comeback. Once nearly eradicated, syphilis rates are increasing across the world . In Japan they are at a four decade-high, with 5,770 people diagnosed with the disease last year alone, according to figures from the National Institute of Infectious quoted in The Japan Times .

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