However, she added that hand sanitizers were placed at the temple entrance and around the festival. Itano suggested participants in the naked part of the festival not wear masks during the rough and tumble part of the main event. This year, festival organizers have also taken extra precautions amid the coronavirus outbreak. You can either register in advance to buy your loincloth and tabi socks, or buy them on site if you feel like joining in. You don’t have to be a local to take part in the main “naked” event. A fireworks show starts at 7 p.m.Īt Gofuku-dori, a nearby shopping street, locals open their doors and welcome participants and spectators. Okinoshima: World Heritage Site banned to womenīefore the main Okayama event, there is an afternoon of traditional dances and a performance by a troupe of female drummers. There are plenty of other festivities to check out for those that don’t feel like stripping down to a loincloth in mid-winter, too. It’s one of several “naked festivals” held across Japan, with another held at Yotsukaido in Chiba prefecture, featuring men in loincloths fighting and carrying kids through mud as a method of exorcism. With its long heritage, the festival was also designated an Important Intangible Folk Cultural Asset in 2016. Their clothes just got in the way too, so they eventually did away with them and exchanged paper for wood, said Itano. But they realized that when they went to grab the paper it ripped. More and more villagers wanted those lucky paper talismans and the ritual grew in size. The festival evolved from a ritual that started 500 years ago during the Muromachi Period (1338-1573), when villagers competed to grab paper talismans, which were given out by a priest at the Saidaiji Kannonin Temple. Men in loincloths bathe in cold water to purify their souls as part of the 'Hadaka Matsuri' (Naked Festival) at Saidaiji Temple on Februin Okayama, Japan. Some attend the event alone, but many participants join as part of teams representing local businesses.

Visitors come from all across Japan and a few from abroad to take part. The whole event lasts around 30 minutes and participants emerge with a few cuts, bruises and sprained joints. The shingi are more sought after than the less-coveted twigs, which can be taken home. Whoever succeeds is guaranteed a year of good fortune, according to legend. The 10,000 or so men, packed in like sardines, jostle with each other to get hold of one of the bundles and/or the two sticks. When the lights go out at 10 p.m., a priest throws 100 bundles of twigs and two lucky 20-centimeter-long shingi sticks into the crowd from a window four meters above. In the evening, the men spend an hour or two running around the temple grounds in preparation and purify themselves with freezing cold water, before cramming themselves into the main temple building. “We hope they will be able to keep the tradition alive in the future,” Mieko Itano, a spokeswoman from the Okayama tourism board, told CNN Travel.

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