This is the Fertility Festival in a little suburb of Nagoya Japan. While it turned out too look a lot like a penis worshipping festival, it was slightly different...slightly.
The point of this matsuri is to give good luck to those who are trying to have children or to prevent childhood sickness's to those expecting. I think over the years it's kind of lost some of it's purpose in a few ways. Like...the part where buckets and buckets of free sake (rice wine) is given out to everyone. I don't think pregnant women really NEEED that, though I am sure it lowers peoples standards to the point where more children are concieved.
There is a shrine (Tagata Jinja) where people go to pray for these types of things. There are tons of phallus shaped wood carvings and rocks here to pray on/to.
There is a nice large parade esque march from one shrine that is about a mile away to the Tagata Jinja. From the far one, a giant giant penis shrine is carried. First a priest walks by with salt to put on the part of the penis shrine. Following this, various people run around giving out more free alcohol, then various other shrines and things are brought by. Finally a giant flag is brought by to teach the male anatomy to everyone. (Though, it's probably not the male anatomy people need the lesson on, probably the female Rubik's Cube of an anatomy would have been more productive for everyone...no offense...) Anyway, finally the big guy arrives (I can say guy, because it's a penis.) It's carved out of a tree (Cedar I think.) it's 620 pounds and 96 inches long. It's brought to Tagata Jinja and everyone cheers when it makes it there.
(This is the final stretch... the were spinning it faster earlier but I think they were tired after a mile and 620 pounds.)
After this little show they put on they throw rice cakes off of a raised stage (about 20 feet up). They warned us before hand via a PA system that old people and young children should NOT partake in this. We figured it was kind of a silly little warning that Japan just HAD to say because someone probably got hurt ones and sued. There were buckets and buckets of these big white rice cakes (not dried rice cakes, they looked like balls of dough), guys came out and on the count of three started throwing them into the audience. I reached up to catch one and I'm pretty sure the rice cake stopped, took out a bat, and hit my hand and fingers with them. Because there is no way a rice cake should be that painful to catch. Suddenly it went from cute little balls of dough to realizing they were hard-as-a-rock-rice-hockey-puck-bullets. I tried to take a video of it but it's hard to see what's going on because I was scared for my life and stopped paying attention to the camera and payed attention to what could possibly be the last few seconds of my life. I ended up catching two. This was a horrible idea for a potential musician.
We witnessed some serious casualties as we left the rice cake party. One guy with a broken nose sat with blood all over his hands. (I'm not kidding, they were HARD. AS. ROCKS.)
Anyway... what a weird festival. Of course, for my photographs feel free to visit
http://michaelmalarkey.myphotoalbum.com
I'll be away going to Hiroshima/Miajima/Himeji for the next 3 days... stories to hopefully follow...
3 comments:
I am speechless. They sure know how to have a good time.
that weirds me out a lot
Maybe you can bring this tradition back to the US. How about for Evanston's First Night. Frozen Rice Cake Catching Competition led by our own Mayor Lorraine Morton.
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