Taking place every February at a Shinto shrine in Inazawa, northwest of Nagoya, the Hadaka Matsuri, or “Nudity Festival” traditionally sees thousands of male participants who wear very little other than tiny loincloths, socks and bandanas. They fight and jostle, are doused with icy water and bid to become “luckiest of the year” in what is essentially a mass prosperity and fertility rite to drive away evil spirits and pestilence.
It is custom rather than an official ban that has prevented women from taking part but now, thanks to campaigners, for the first time in the 1,250-year-history of the carnival, women will be joining in – albeit with some caveats.
Women allowed to take part in ‘naked festival’ for the first time
Unlike the men, the females will be limited to a group of approximately 40 who will keep their clothes on as they make bamboo grass offerings. As well as refraining from getting naked, the women will stay out of the main momiai or good luck “scuffle.” They are pleased nonetheless, with one of the activists, Ayaka Suzuki, who helped to change the views on female participants, telling local media she had been dreaming of being involved since she was a child, adding “I could have participated had I been a boy.”
Women are still a long way off full participation however and who knows how long it will be before a woman adopts the most important role of all in the festival: the holder of the “naked man” title. The so-called shin-otoko retreats into solitude and prayer for days before the event. His head and body hair are completely shaved and during the festival he emerges into the crowds completely nude. In what one person, who spoke anonymously to Travel Tomorrow described as “an orgy of repressed homosexuality”, the thousands of loin-cloth-wearers then attempt to touch him, in order to pass their bad luck to him before he returns to the shrine.
Tradition versus Change
Attitudes towards female and outsider participation in certain Japanese customs are shifting, but slowly. In a similar move to the Nudity Festival, women were able to join in Shiga prefecture’s 800-year-old Katsube fire festival for the first time this year. But women are still not supposed to go anywhere near the traditional sumo ring or dohyo, and much debate ensued in 2018 when a group of women rushed onto the dohyo to treat a local official who had suffered a medical emergency.
Some argue that, if Japan is to avoid the death of its traditions and fight against rural exodus and depopulation, it needs not only to reimagine its tourist destinations but to be more open to equality and modern mindsets. In poignant news, organisers announced it would be the last incarnation of the similar 1,000-year-old Somin-sai festival this year, due to the elderly nature of its male participants and a shortage of personnel.
