Orient Expat

[Bluecat]

Aichi's festivals let it all hang out

23 March 2006. Mainichi News

A certain sector of Aichi Prefecture, says Cyzo (April), is packed with sordid Shinto shrines and brazen Buddhist temples dedicated to the pleasures of the flesh.

Aichi, the monthly notes, is home to Mama Kannon, the only Buddhist temple in the country devoted entirely to the worship of women's breasts. The same prefecture is also home to the Tenteko Matsuri, a festival featuring a procession where one of the participants carries a phallic-shaped radish and grinds and thrusts their hips in time with the beat of a drum.

Cyzo points out that Aichi is also well-known for the internationally famous Tagata Jinja fertility festival, where a huge reproduction of a male organ is paraded through the streets atop a shrine.

Perhaps the most outlandish of all Aichi's flesh festivals, however, takes place each March 15 in the city of Inuyama. It's the Onnagata fertility festival, one of the few in the Japan to deify the female genitalia -- an extremely rare feat in a land where other graphic depictions of the same object are usually treated with Orwellian standards of censorship.

The festival itself centers on a parade. Shrine priests and shrine maidens ride, for some reason, in a convertible that heads the procession. A flattop truck follows closely behind their vehicle.

On the bed of the truck is a huge work of art which, at first glance, bears a close resemblance to Otafuku, the ruddy cheeked Japanese goddess of mirth and merriment whose name literally translates as "plenty of fortune".

Closer inspection, however, reveals that Otafuku's mouth is actually an extremely accurate depiction of a woman's privates. In some ways, the festival is literally a centuries-old Japanese version of a "Vagina Monolog."

Up until a few decades ago, Cyzo says, there was little effort made to conceal the body part in a work of art and the areas where the festival was held were festooned with flags covered in pictures of pudenda.

A portable shrine made to look like the same organ featured in the festival, but postwar values deemed that to be going a bit too far. Organizers decided to go for what the monthly calls a "more sophisticated erotica."

[yohan]

.... there was little effort made to conceal the body part in a work of art and the areas where the festival was held were festooned with flags covered in pictures of pudenda.
....

In Japan, sexual activity was never a taboo subject, not now and not during history. This was an idea from the US-occupation after WWII, to go ahead changing the moral values of the Japanese people.

Before WWII, the not covered breast of women was never considered to be obscene - neither those from young nor from old women. Most women anyway are rather flat...

Same is true to the legs of women...extreme short mini-skirt is totally in for young girls (including school uniform) up to now, but nobody really cares about, women's legs were never considered to be anything special attractive. Most women anyway have a tendency to X-form and are short built.

Only the genitals, the pussy of the woman including some pubic hair is considered as obscene and has to be covered.

For the men, only the penis area including the pubic hair is considered to be obscene, during religious festivals often men have barely covered even that, when using traditional clothings, the most part of the body remains naked.

Also prostitution was legal in Japan in public. Still legal, but now it must be done out of sight from any public area, like in a club in the basement of a house.
Even child pornography was legal up to 1990 - usually, children from prostitutes were acting as the models.

There are not only temples and shrines for women breast...there is also a penis festival in several cities in Japan...

This post has been edited by yohan: 2006-03-22 20:33:50

[Bluecat]

In Japan, sexual activity was never a taboo subject, not now and not during history. This was an idea from the US-occupation after WWII, to go ahead changing the moral values of the Japanese people.

Reminds me of another one

Sex was invented in America in the 60s. Before that, it did not exist.
Robert Horst

[Bluecat]

Thousands gather for fertility festival

3 April. Mainichi News

KAWASAKI -- Thousands flocked to a small shrine here Sunday to take part in the Kanamara Festival, an event with roots dating back centuries and known for its huge consecrated phallus portable shrine carried mostly by transvestites.


Pictures posted at news.3yen.com

Revelers also watched mostly young women sit atop huge wooden penises made as Shinto totems, each woman sparking a rapid-fire succession of camera flashes from the dozens of mostly middle-aged men armed with digital cameras.

Shinto fertility related items including amulets, prayer tablets and other religious paraphernalia were on sale, as were candies made in the shape of the genitalia of both sexes. Sellers of some candies found it hard to keep up with demand.

"Japan's got so many festivals, but this one has to be one of the more unique ones. They had candies, they had photos, everything. It brought everyone together. It brought together foreigners and Japanese. I guess there were probably more foreigners there than Japanese," Brett Bull, an American from Tokyo, said. "They drew in so many people and it was so packed. And everybody went in with a straight face. It was a very straightforward, business-like procession."

Kanamara Festival is named after Kanamara Sama, or Lord Iron Penis. The festival dates back to the 17th century when Kawasaki was a station town along the Tokaido Road that ran from where the shoguns ruled in Edo, the ancient name for Tokyo, to the ancient capital of Kyoto.

Meshimori Onna, a name meaning waitress but actually the term given to prostitutes who serviced travelers along the Tokaido, began the Kanamara Festival in the Edo Period (1604-1868), when they offered prayers at the shrine for prosperous business and protection from sexually transmitted diseases, gonorrhea in particular.

Now, the shrine continues to attract worshippers for the same reasons, while operators say visitors can also pray for childbirth, healthy offspring, easy delivery and marital harmony.

Kanamara Festival also campaigns strongly to promote awareness of HIV/AIDS. Members of the Kawasaki Municipal Government set up a booth at the festival and handed out free condoms and material related to the deadly illness.