when i was in high school, a bunch of the female teachers and teachers wives went to this, and unbeknownst to them, were photographed riding giant penises by some magazine. somehow we found the magazine, and of course, scandal ensued. but those were simpler times. nobody got fired. we just got pictures of our teachers playing with enormous penises. That was reward enough.

that's a very, very large penis.
ouch.

So part of growing up bicultural meant, educating myself about both cultures and being able to explain things about either culture when asked. Today, I feel the resposibility to explain the above festival -- but this is out of my league, guys. I didn't even know these things existed! um... not the existence of penii, but rather the festivals that celebrate them. Well, I think this requires some further investigation, and thorough research on my end. Will be back with a full report!

Go forth Puchan! HQ resources are at your disposal for your research. But just keep in mind I'll be napping most of the day.

Shocking expose: that poster is not for the Penis Festival, it's for the Naked Festival. Let's not confuse the two.

The Naked Festival is held in January or February, if I recall correctly. According to Japanese Buddhism, there are a few specific ages which are considered to be very volatile ones, and at which many misfortunes might befall a man or woman if they do not take certain precautions. (I do not recall the specific ages...I believe there are about three of them, differing slightly for men and women.)

One of these precautions is attendance to the Naked Festival. All the men of the most at-risk ages gather outside in their fundoshi (similar to the diaper-esque clothing worn by sumo wrestlers) and drink a shitload of sake until they can't feel the cold. Then the real fun begins.

One man is designated as the "shin-otoko" ("god-man"), who will act as a receptacle for all the misfortune of the other three-hundred or so dudes. The object of the game is to touch the shin-otoko, thereby passing your misfortune into him.

Sounds charming enough, but when you get three-hundred drunk-ass half-naked dudes all chasing after one half-naked dude, the results can become pretty violent. The shin-otoko is mobbed and trampled, and often ends up briefly hospitalized. Nevertheless, the role of the shin-otoko is an important and prestigeous one, and the list of young men waiting to be shin-otoko is reportedly very long.

Invariably the shin-otoko, piss-ass drunk and repeatedly smacked, punched, and trampled, loses consciousness. The common method employed to revive him is...to yank on his cock. I shit you not.

So that's the Naked Festival. I'll tell you about the Penis Festival next time. It's almost weirder.

And now that I've posted that entirely irrelevant report, I see that I have misread the poster. It is for the Penis Festival after all.

So I guess you get a twofer.

The Penis Festival that I attended in Aichi was centered around a Shinto shrine devoted to a fertility god. On the grounds of the shrine there is a cast-iron sculpture of a pair of testicles, with a coin slot in one of them. You put your coin in and pray for fertility.

On the day of the festival, about 30 teenage girls from the village dress in white robes and carry two-foot penis statues in a parade to the shrine. The statues are erect, and decorated with ribbons and streamers. The girls are preceded by a group of drummers to keep rhythm.

They are followed by a group of men from the village, who carry a much larger penis. Unlike the girls' individual penii, which are carried on sticks and point straight up to the sky, the men's penis is a good six feet in length, and carried among all the men on its side, like a battering ram.

When the parade arrives at the shrine, the girls fall back and the men go ahead into the shrine itself. There, in the presence of the priest, the men run the battering cock in wild circles, yelling and screaming and trying not to smash the giant phallus into the delicate walls of the room. Not easy when you're drunk and shouldering a massive wooden dildo.

There are more than a few such festivals around the country, and I'm sure there are plenty of local variations. I have seen pictures of a giant metal phallus on permanent display on the grounds of one Shinto shrine. Young girls are brought and made to straddle it like a rocking horse, in the belief that it will help them to grow up to be fertile. I have seen a couple pictures of smiling four-year-olds sitting atop that cock, completely without a clue as to what the whole thing is all about, where their parent look on proudly.

Let's all go together next time.

Well, I have returned against my will... *cbt3 shoves puchan back into the room*. Apprently I must report back for real! Hodare (On the poster it says, "Hodare Festival") means hanging down heavy... like a rice plant ready to be harvested. So it's about worshipping not only the fertily of the farmer but also the good harvesting of their crop. I am assuming the following: undoubtedly the rice crop is important to a farmer, but also the ability to have children must be as well, as they can help with farming and such.(...and we ALL know that the penis is the ONLY thing needed to make children!) In Japan apprently this is not the only penis festival, there seems to be a few. So, after some deep penetrating reserach, it doesn't seem so weird, huh. So my next question, how do people here worship the penis? I was trying to think of examples, then I got a headache.

Well we elected one president, I think that means something.

hahahahaha - good one cbt3

vertical construction? everything in texas is bigger , absurdly so? the forgotten anthropologist in the enforcer should be able to give us some more insight.

Thanks Puchan, I forgot that detail. All of the penis festivals are inextricably linked with preparation for planting and harvesting. It is not only their women the farmers want to be fertile; it is also the fields. They pray to the fertility gods in the hopes that the earth will be fertile and produce a large crop.

So yeah, a little weird in practice, but pretty wholesome in theory. All they are asking is for the gods to make sweet love to the earth.

um well, lets see - there's the National Monument, modeled after an Egyptian obelisk, whcih is literally a represenation of the male phallus (those uninitiated may be disappointed). That's the one I have off the top of my head, pun intended. Srta Anthropologista has been asleep for some time.

Aircraft carrier = a cock so big you can land a plane on it

Hey guys- this is something foreigners laughed at, which encouraged the nuttier domestic contingency to bastardize the ceremony beyond belief. it's no sillier than anything else in that country.

The Fertility Festival is held at a shrine to Fertility (natch) in Kama-Kitazawa, I believe (way the fuck out from the city center). What I"m sure used to be a pious or at least humble event with childless women begging for their wombs to be blessed has turned into a 3 ring circus complete with enormous grantie phallas statuettes surrounding the shrine, drag queen parades, prostitues praying that disease won't render them infertile, and transvestitives paying for successful surgeries. It's now called the Penis Festival pretty much by foreigners and locals alike, and the Japanese don't advertise it much, they try to pretend it isn't going on. When I lived in Japan we had to look pretty hard to find advertisements for it, we thought it was urban legend.

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