the fundoshi wears YOU.

Each picture I've found has a story. Some of them take place at Japanese winter festivals, some are in windowless rooms. Some are public, and full of levity, others carry a pensive sexual charge or a note of voyeurism. The first mention of fundoshi is in the Nihongi, one of the earliest chronicles of Japanese history, written around 697 A.D. With that kind of time on its hands, no doubt fundoshi has been involved in all sorts of situations: simple and unseen under clothing, sweetly under blossoming cherry trees, or sweat-soaked and inflamed with desire in anonymous brothels.

Fundoshi in and of itself is a simple piece of cloth, and when we put ourselves in fundoshi we are still ourselves. So if we are inclined toward adventure, fundoshi is adventurous. If we are amorous, fundoshi is sensual. If we are pragmatic, fundoshi is functional.

The poet and priest Ikkyu wrote a rather spicy verse concerning his own fundoshi, and what it contained. Considering he lived between 1394-1481, before Columbus had even sailed the ocean blue, his risque poem leaves little to the imagination:

A Man's Root:
Eight inches strong, it is my favourite thing;
If I'm alone at night, I embrace it fully -
A beautiful woman hasn't touched it for ages.
Within my fundoshi there is an entire universe!