Big Naked Festival in Japan

In the coldest month of the year, the Shinto religion sees nude Japanese chasing each other round. Who needs a nudist camp with Shin-otoko around?

Most men don’t really need an excuse to take their clothes off and run around as nature intended – remove laws about public nudity and flashing, and many chaps would happily trundle down the street as nature intended.

Wannabe nudists desperate to get stripping and expose their manhood will love the Hadaka Matsuri event in Japan every January, therefore. Translated from Japanese, it literally means ‘naked festival’ and it is a Shinto religious festival, regarded as a test of manhood.

The actual events differ depending on which town or city events are taking place in, but lots of man flesh is a prerequisite at precisely the time of year when everything gets cold, blue and shrivelled.

This means visitors can observe naked men in Tokyo, strippers in Osaka, rampant nudity in Kyoto and bare buttocks in Sendai, but the biggest bang is to be found in Inazawa on Honshu.

In Inazawa every January, over 10,000 men dressed in the minimalist style compete to touch Shin-otoko (or The Chosen One). Unsurpisingly, Shin-otoko is yet another naked man, who has been chosen as a scapegoat to represent and symbolise all of the town’s sins and evils.

It is believed that by touching Shin-otoko, the scantily-clad chap (one of the 10,000 blokes in the buff giving chase) purifies himself and his spirit.

Whilst to many of us, the sight of 10,000 naked men chasing each other around is either a recipe for high comedy or a particularly X-rated adult movie, in Japan this is seen as being quite legitimate, even if it is often more in a spirit of fun than ultra-seriousness.

Still, if you can’t beat them, join them? Who needs to book into a Japanese nudist camp when you’ve got the naked festival of Hadaka Matsuri?