LUCAS DE LA CAL Inazawa
Inazawa
Updated Friday, February 23, 2024-02:08
The "hyper-aging" country Inside Japan's collapse
Sweat trickles down their naked bodies despite the cold.
They are only dressed in loincloths.
They shout, bless and push each other.
They drink shots of sake to warm up.
The weakest fall into the mud.
Some, clinging to the backs of the plump ones, manage to climb until they stick their heads above the sea of
10,000 men who rub their bodies to shake off bad luck
.
Before joining the brawling naked crowd, Kioko completed his yearly ritual:
two days completely isolated
, locked in a room, spending the entire time praying.
With his soul now purified, he summoned his family to begin the undressing ceremony.
First, his mother and sister shaved his entire body.
Later, his father placed the
fundoshi
on him , as the white cloth that serves as a loincloth is known.
It is the fifth time that Kioko, a 29-year-old engineer, has participated in the
"naked man festival
. "
This is what Hadaka Matsuri is popularly known as, a Shinto festival with 1,250 years of history that is celebrated annually on the 13th of the Lunar New Year at the Konomiya shrine, in the Japanese city of Inazawa.
"The ultimate goal that we all have is to touch the shin-otoko (divine man), a chosen one who is the bearer of good luck. By touching him, he assumes the other person's misfortunes," Kioko explains just before entering. to a mud that looks more like a massive sumo fight than a religious ritual.
It's Thursday and it just stopped raining when the party started.
The sun is even shining when the first groups of naked men begin to arrive.
There are all ages.
From the elderly to children
.
Even a foreigner like Adam, a Dutch businessman who has been living in Japan for 12 years.
"I had to drink a lot of beer and sake before my Japanese friends finally convinced me to come and
show my ass to thousands of strangers
. But it is an incredible and liberating experience," he says.
Indeed, in addition to the participants, there are thousands of tourists from all over the country who have traveled to Inazawa to see a festival that this year had attracted more attention than on other occasions because it had been announced that, for the first time, women would participate, although
away from the crowd of sweaty men
.
Before beginning the male climax, about 40 women, all dressed, did their particular prayer ritual, in silence and with bamboo offerings.
The buzz starts mid-morning when the first male processions arrive.
They enter in groups, holding tree branches or bamboo sticks wrapped in ribbons or plastic tarps that they carry into the temple.
They are like the costaleros of Holy Week, with the same energy but with less clothes.
Many burst into tears
.
"It's the most important day of the year for us," says Masayoshi, another of the participants.
In addition to the
fundoshi
, the men wear ribbons on their heads that they then break into several pieces that they give to the audience present, who cheer and applaud the show.
When all the groups have paraded, the crowd gathers on a long sand walkway at the entrance to the temple.
A few begin to throw buckets of water everywhere.
That's when the stampede begins.
"This Shinto ritual is
a fierce fight between naked men
, who are chosen through prayer and a divine decision. This is based on the belief that if you touch the divine man, you will be able to eliminate evil spirits," reads an advertisement published in the temple website.
"Be sure to write your name, phone number, and the company you work for in a place that can be easily seen from the outside of the loincloth. Also be careful not to drink too much alcohol.
Drunk people are not required to participate
."
A clear hint that most of the participants do not comply with, especially the youngest ones.
Drunkenness serves to withstand the cold and as a boost of energy when the time comes for hand-to-hand combat.
The roots of this festival date back to a time of plague and other diseases when the superstitious local population wanted to expel bad luck.
Men in loincloths paraded through the city, throwing buckets of ice water at each other.
As now, they carried portable altars on long bamboo poles decorated with ribbons.
The culmination has always been the arrival at the sanctuary.
Within traditional Shinto belief, which is considered a religion indigenous to Japan, with writings dating back to 300 BC, there is a god (kami) for virtually every object, concept, action and presence.
Followers of Shintoism believe that kami exist in everything
, from natural elements such as rocks and trees, to artificial ones, and even in people.
There are more than 100,000 Shinto shrines (jinja) throughout Japan.
Worshipers visit temples to pay homage to the kami or pray for good luck.
It is common for families to bring newborns and for many couples to celebrate their weddings in the jinja.
The entrance to Konomiya Shrine is marked by a torii, as the large wooden doors are called.
It also has a pair of statues of guardian lions, the komainu, one with its mouth open and the other with its mouth closed.
In some Shinto temples, several festivals of the naked man are celebrated every year, such as Inazawa, which is the oldest of all and which this year took on special importance because it was the only one in which women participated in the rituals for the first time.
although again far from the focus and noise
.
Last week, it was the mountainous temple of Kokuseki, in Iwate prefecture, in the northeast of the country, that received hundreds of men in white loincloths at sunset.
Organizers of the Iwate festival announced that, after more than 1,000 years of the event's history, this year would be the last one to be held due to a
lack of younger participants
to keep it going.
Many of the rural areas where this type of rituals are performed are practically unpopulated.
Japan is the oldest country in the world, with almost 30% of the population aged 65 or older.
Furthermore, one in 10 Japanese is over 80 years old.
A gigantic demographic bomb that endangers the naked man festivals.