nick’s (n)-line life

n-line rarely posts on Japan, mainly because it’s not a place that he knows or understand very well. However, a recent post at Asia Blog caught my interest and is unusual enough that I though I’d venture into the arena for a while. It seems that the first Saturday in April was Japan’s Kanamara Festival. I’ve never heard of the event before but as far as I can gather it’s a  rather unusal and ostentatious fertility festival. The festival is frequently informally dubbed the “Japanese Penis Festival", the center-piece [exuse the bad pun!]: 

include transvestites parading through the town's streets carrying a mikoshi (portable shrine) with a humungous pink phallus on top. [ Source: Metropolis; read in full… ]  

The whole thing looks slighyl surreal but it really is a family orientated event and kids and old women alike sit around sucking penis-shaped seeet and lollies! I falls very squarely outside of my experiences in Asia, the unusual festivals I'm used to are more in-line with the Vegetarian Festival in Phuket (ace photos on that page) or Thaipusam in Malaysia (my photo, external photos). Certainly the festival is about s far-removed from western festivals as anything I've ever seem.

Steve Goes Travelling has a video from the 2004 celebrations as well as a good commentary of his personal experiences of the festival A light discussion of the origins of the festival can be found here and a good walk-around tour video of the festival can be found here.

If you're still morbidly fascinated after all of these links a YouTube search turns up another 10 or so and there are many images on flickr. It’s just another example of the openness and willingness to discuss sexuality in Japan, n-line things this is probably preferable to the stuffy British attitudes he has grown up with, but n-line's childlike mentality makes it hard not to have a little giggle about it all.