Enlarge image
This sight will no longer exist in the coming years
Photo:
Richard Atrero de Guzman/NurPhoto/Getty Images
The population decline in Japan stops at nothing: now the Somin-sai festival is falling victim to it. At this wild festival, hordes of men, each wearing nothing more than a thong-shaped loincloth and thin socks, engage in fierce fighting at night in winter temperatures.
They want to get hold of a hemp bag with good luck charms in the belief that this will protect them from harm. The spectacle at Kokusekiji Temple in northeastern Iwate Prefecture has a 1,000-year history - but that has now ended.
The shrine decided to stop the festival because the participants were getting older and there was a lack of successors who could continue the tradition, the Japanese newspaper "Asahi Shimbun" reported. This means that one of Japan's most bizarre folk festivals is falling victim to rapid aging.
And so this year, almost naked men gathered in the temple for the last time in the freezing cold. They first purified themselves in a river and then went to a hall of the shrine, where they prayed for a good harvest and other blessings before wrestling over a hemp sack containing small good-luck charms, the newspaper reported.
There are still other naked festivals
The Somin-sai festival was one of the three most important "Hadaka Matsuri", festivals of naked men, in the island kingdom. This also includes the Saidaiji Eyo in the Saidaiji Kannonin Temple in Okayama Prefecture, 700 kilometers from Tokyo. There, too, at night in wintry temperatures, 10,000 men in loincloths and thin socks scramble to get hold of two wooden sticks that, according to their belief, will bring good luck for a year.
Last year, the number of centenarians in Japan rose to a record level: the country had 92,139 people aged 100 or more in 2023. The number has been rising every year for 53 years now. Given low birth rates and almost no immigration, the East Asian country is aging faster than any other industrial nation.
svs/dpa