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The story
Across Japan there are so-called “strange festivals” (kisai) that treat genitals as objects of worship, and an article profiling a female researcher who spent 10 years following these events became a hot topic on 5ch’s News Speed+ board. Posters quickly named specific festivals — Kawasaki’s “Kanamara Matsuri,” the Hōnen Festival at Tagata Shrine in Aichi, and Iwate’s Konsei Festival — with many explaining their origins as traditions praying for fertility and the prosperity of descendants. At the same time, some voiced concerns that the festivals are “out of step with the times” and might “eventually be branded as sexual harassment and disappear,” while others pointed to actual photos to argue that “women seem to enjoy it more than men do.” The thread saw a wide range of views exchanged over the meaning of keeping these festivals alive and how sexuality should be regarded.
[Caution: source link contains explicit imagery]
A giant “mikoshi” portable shrine shaped like a male phallus is carried through the streets, and couples hoping for children straddle a phallic sacred object. Some rituals even feature figures representing “Hyottoko” and “Okame” (comic masks symbolizing male and female) coming together.
Across Japan there are unusual festivals that treat genitals as objects of worship. One woman has spent the past 10 years following these so-called “strange festivals.”
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3crQYWGQedg
Re: #26
Festivals like this might eventually get branded as sexual harassment and disappear someday.
People stopped dying so fast.
Instead,
they stopped having kids.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0KjdUjvTHA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=af7OvqJ0hhM
Sounds like the comedy duo Doburokku showed up and performed a song this year.
Went and checked it out.
Wish someone would touch my "sacred object" too.
Looks to me like the women are enjoying it way more than the men lol
https://image.omatsurijapan.com/articleimg/2023/10/ae8fba84-dsc03102-1200×802.jpg
(;゜Д゜) Well, it's an officially sanctioned day after all —
so all the gentlemen and ladies who usually keep it bottled up get to let off some steam, just this once.
Uekaromariko (appears to be a nonsense in-joke; meaning unclear)
At Kawaji Onsen, the "Onade Stone" (a female-shaped sacred stone) is the real deity there — the male one is just an add-on.
(;゜Д゜) Was there really something like that?
Who was it chasing — Reiko?
Shin'ichi "Aum" Nakazawa (I say this not to disparage him, but because it's literally the basis of his international reputation), who hails from an old lineage in Kai, portrayed Mishaguchi as a Jōmon-era sacred power — that is, as a universal belonging to an ancient cultural stratum. In doing so he became a source of relief for people burdened by sexual stigma, including those in the nightlife trade. The sanctity of the phallus itself is still openly, ordinarily present all over Bhutan even now — it's a culture shared across the "utagaki cultural sphere," i.e. the "evergreen broadleaf forest belt" stretching from the southern foothills of the Himalayas through Okinawa, Kyushu, and Shikoku, all the way to the Pacific coast of Honshu (as the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki passages on Yamato Takeru suggest, this held true as far as the area around Mt. Tsukuba).
One more thing: Mishaguchi itself actually seems to carry a strong element of the Suwa serpent-god/sun-god worship. That's a great and powerful tradition, but there are plenty of other serpent gods out there too.
It's extremely well known that the Bible is the origin of the term "onanism" (masturbation)!
It was the West that treated sexuality as evil.
Then in the Meiji era, Japan was told, "If you want to become a civilized nation like us, stop doing such barbaric things,"
and Japan changed accordingly.
I think it was the Hideyo Noguchi Museum — when I went years ago, they had a whole collection of wooden carvings shaped like male and female genitals, the kind people used to enshrine in the ceilings of houses, all gathered and displayed.
Went again recently and they were gone.
Guess history like this just gets erased.
There are actually quite a few festivals like this, praying for children or for descendants to thrive.
Back then there probably wasn't this modern pressure to censor genitals that literally everyone has.
Can't help it — a "who-ha" is just harder to sculpt than a "pee-pee." There's not enough sticking out to work with.
Genitals existed even before humanity did.
Background and Key Points of This Topic
Festivals enshrining genitals are said to originate from prayers for bountiful harvests and the prosperity of descendants in agricultural society. Kawasaki’s Kanayama Shrine (Kanamara Matsuri), Tagata Shrine in Komaki, Aichi Prefecture (Hōnen Festival), and Iwate Prefecture’s Konsei Festival remain events officially run by local governments or shrines today, and it’s not unusual for them to be covered by overseas media as tourist draws. These festivals saw a decline after the Meiji era, when Western-influenced sexual morality led to them being viewed as public indecency, but many survive today thanks to a reevaluation of them as folk belief. In the thread, two views clashed: concern that the festivals “might be branded as sexual harassment and disappear,” and the counterpoint, backed by photos, that “women seem to enjoy it more than men.” This reflected a divide between those who link the festivals’ survival to the issue of sexual harassment and those who emphasize their legitimacy as folk tradition. Worth noting: the researcher’s own reasons for being drawn to these “strange festivals” are explained only in the original article itself, while the thread’s discussion mostly stuck to debating the festivals’ merits and trading bawdy banter.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Speed+) thread “[Strange Festival] “The phallus came chasing after me” — the female researcher who spent 10 years following Japan’s nationwide “genital worship” festivals, and why she fell under their spell.”
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