This year the format of the festival will change.
The temple in Japan that organizes the famous “Naked Festival” will allow women to participate for the first time in its 1250-year history.
The Independent writes about this.
A group of local women in Inazawa in Japan's Aichi Prefecture gather to join the annual Hadaka Matsuri festival held in February at Konomiya Shrine.
Although the women will remain fully clothed and avoid the traditional brutal combat of nearly naked men in loincloths, they will take part in the naoizasa ritual, which requires them to carry cloth-wrapped bamboo grass into the shrine grounds .
Men typically wear a Japanese loincloth known as a fundoshi and a pair of white socks called tebe. The festival, which celebrates a bountiful harvest, prosperity and fertility, begins around 3:20 p.m. local time.
The Mainichi reported that a group of about 40 local women will participate in the ancient festival for the first time.
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36-year-old Ayaka Suzuki, quoted by Yomiuri Shimbun, said that she had wanted to participate in the festival since she was a child. She said she used to think, “I could take part if I were a boy!”
About 10,000 people are expected to take part in the festival.
Mitsugu Katayama, a representative of the organizing committee, told the South China Morning Post: “We have not been able to hold the festival as before in the past three years due to the pandemic, and during this time we received a lot applications from women of the city to participate in the festival.”
Meanwhile, local women and gender activists praised the decision, calling it a positive step in their quest for equality.
During the festival, scantily clad men try to grab one of two 20-centimeter wooden singi sticks thrown by a priest into the crowd. The sticks, thrown among 100 bunches of branches, are intended to bring a year of good fortune to whoever is lucky enough to catch them.
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