Butts! Hairy butts! That's all I could think of among the chaos of men in loincloths rushing around Shirahama in Himeji last weekend. I was there for the Kenka Matsuri, or Fighting Festival, at Matsubara Hachiman Shrine. The official name is the Nada Fighting Festival, perhaps because that is what the participants are wearing -- nada! With such flesh on display, one can't help but be impressed with the variety of Japanese butts: hairy butts, pimpled butts, dimpled butts, square butts and bony butts. It's all part of the Japanese festival atmosphere.
Himeji's Kenka Matsuri is one of Japan's more violent festivals. One brochure describes it thus: "Portable shrines, shouldered by half-naked youths, jostle each other and the bearers vie to show their skill in balancing the shrines." Half-naked? No, these guys are butt-naked!
Butt-nakedness is actually a tradition of some Japanese Shinto festivals. Here are a few common characteristics of such festivals: