Hadaka Matsuri 2021 Season

Saturday, February 20 was the Saidai-Ji Eyo, one of the largest Naked Festivals in Japan, held annually for over 500 years. The winter festival is attended by over 9,000 participants and is probably the outside world's largest exposure to fundoshi as that is all that is worn.

After much consideration, this ancient Shinto festival was altered this year due to the ongoing pandemic. Attendance was limited. Crowds were not allowed inside the temple. While the interruption of tradition is unfortunate,  it was made with life and safety in mind and to make sure everyone will be around to enjoy future naked festivals.

Let's all attend in the future when it safe again!

Washoi!

(Enjoy a selection of Matsuri images from past years after the break)

Three Great Photographers Of Yesterday

When looking into the past for photographs of Japanese men wearing the fundoshi, three photographers come to mind: Tamotsu Yato, Kuro Haga, and Kurihama Yozo.

I want to share a brief profile of each artist. All three too beautiful and accomplished photos of men in homoerotic scenarios or displaying their physiques; sometimes nude but often dressed in fundoshi or brief underwear.

Blue laws of the time meant that penises, if shown at all, must be blurred or censored. These photographers found that leaving their models semi-clad could reveal their arousal and raw sensuality, while skirting the censorship rules.

Tamotsu Yato (矢頭 保, 1928-1973)

The first name to come to mind is Tamotsu Yato. His association with author Yukio Mishima has generated considerable interest, but Yato was a highly accomplished artist on his own. He was also a long-term romantic partner of Meredith Weatherby, an expatriate American publisher and translator of Mishima's works into English. Unfortunately Yato had a falling out with Weatherby in later life.

Yato was a heavy smoker with a heart defect, and died early and alone. Relatives who denounced his homosexuality seized all his belongings after his death, likely destroying his negatives. Yato's family refused to allow reprints of his three highly influential photo books (Naked Festival, Young Samurai: Bodybuilders Of Japan, and Otoko), however copies of the first Japanese and English printings can still be found with a little effort. They are gorgeous volumes.

Kuro Haga (波賀九郎,  1920-2002)

Haga is best known for publishing Bon Magazine, a series of 16 bound volumes that began in the 1973. Like Yato, Kuro Haga's works featured muscular and masculine men posing outdoors or occasionally in bondage. His work is an exciting mixture of color and monochrome photography, often more explicit in its depiction of male sexuality than Yato, but still within the limits of Japan's censors. Copies of Bon are not easy to purchase outside of Japan, but occasionally turn up on book dealer's websites.

Kurihama Yozo (栗浜陽三)

I only know of a single photo book by Yozo, Kon'Yu: Poetry Of Loincloth, published in 1973. There are strong similarities to the works of both Yato and Haga. Well built men pose at the seaside, at temples and shrines. Their tautly-knitted physiques are framed by fundoshi. Of the traditional loincloth, Yozo says "I don't think there is any clothes that can express the beauty of a man's body so simply. It may even be modern." Information about Yozo is scant. I'd like to learn more about him.

Have you got a favorite photographer who is working with fundoshi today?  Who is helping express the poetry of this loincloth in the present day? I'd love to know your suggestions in the comments! It would be nice to do a feature post about contemporary fundoshi photography.

Ceremonial Scenes

Matsuri!

Festival Thighs

Scenes of Japan

Matsuri Season!

Ghosts Of The Matsuri (or, The Three Friends)

It was not so many moons ago, on the night before Matsuri, that three young men were gathered to practice tying their fundoshi. Although there would be helpers tomorrow who very ably (and tightly) bound festival participants in crisp white cloth, these three men had already taken to the wearing of fundoshi. They wanted to arrive already attired, having each assisted one of the others in dressing:

The fairer-skinned friend learned the exact tightenings and twists prefered by the darkest friend. This friend in turn learned to wrap their tawny friend, who assisted the first, fairer friend in knotting his fundoshi.

These three friends had observed older men wearing fundoshi at an onsen, and had inquired with the gentlemen on how to tighten the cloth. Each friend learned from a different teacher. One friend learned from a stocky teacher. One learned from a slim gentleman. The third friend learned from a muscular sculpture of a man.

Each of the three friends had adopted idiosyncracies and customization of their teacher. One friend liked his fundoshi elegantly finished and braided. Another friend prefered his fundoshi efficiently cinched with little regard to loose ends. The last friend enjoyed his fundoshi tight, as though ready for battle.

It was as they joined one another that night before the festival, in the first friend's apartment, that the news broke. A terrible tsunami had struck the village where their fundoshi instructors lived. Many people fleeing the shoreline were swept away when a bridge came unmoored from its ancient wooden pilings. Among the lost were their three tutors, witnesses said. The men mourned, saying prayers for those lost in the tsunami. It was a somber meeting as they loosened their robes and stepped into the center of the apartment.

Naked Festival 2017, Part 2

Here's a continuation of last week's post. I hope you enjoy it!

Naked Festival 2017, Part 1

The third Saturday in February (this year it was the 18th) is the annual observation of the Saidaiji Hadaka Matsuri (Naked Festival), which is probably the largest public occurence the fundoshi gets! Thousands of men dressed only in fundoshi and tabi socks participate, competing for good luck talismans in a festival known for its cold temperatures, abundant saki consumption, and physical danger.

While current photos of the actual event seem in short supply, here are some images from various Naked Festivals as well as other Shinto-related ceremonies held throughout Japan over the past few years, to give readers a taste of the fundoshi's role in Shinto:

Fundoshi On YouTube

This week I've assembled a collection of fundoshi videos. Seeing the fundoshi in action, especially being tied on, not only helps if you're refining your own technique, it is also uniquely thrilling and gently sensuous all on its own! 1) First off, an enthusiastic vlogger gets a fundoshi tied on!

Seven more videos after the break!

Best of Black and White, Part 1

This week and next, some favorite black and white images.

Some Images Of The Floating World

Red & White

The Fundoshi: Quintessentially Japanese

Fundoshi Grab-Bag!

Some random favorites from my recent fundoshi photo-gathering expeditions:

Some of these are from traditional festivals, some are not. Some are even kind of sweet, some are more masculine or erotic.

Ritual And Release

Here's another collection of festival and sensual scenes. I love the contrast between the two, how context can change a near-naked body from an object of traditional reverence into an object of primordial lust. These things are deeply wired in us. On an instinctual level, we need both sexuality and ritual.

Fundoshi Festival - Photos by Markinjpn

Markinjpn has a fantastic collection of fundoshi photos from firelit, nighttime festivals in Japan. Here are a baker's dozen of his newest, and you can find more if you click on his name! It's a privilege to share these with you.

Beach Fire

There’s nothing quite like a lakeside party on a sun-drenched day to make you feel alive.  After splashing around, waterskiing, drinking cold cans of beer, and generally frolicking in the sun with friends and coworkers I felt nicely browned by the rays and refreshed by the waves.  We had a great time.  There were striped bikinis and girls with lake water softened hair.  There were beach studs with cargo shorts and tanned pecs, and classic rock, oldies, hip hop and indie rock pouring out of cheap portable radios.  We started early and played hard.  People began to trickle away by twos and threes as the shadows got longer, so that by sundown only myself and Adrian were left.  Our dirty feet faced the small fire I had made on the beach, and our arms were draped casually on the cooler – which still harbored an unacceptable quantity of beer cans floating about in icy melt water.  We were doing our best to address that situation.  Adrian was one of the newer guys on my project at work, maybe a couple years younger than me.  We had hung out once or twice, worked out at the gym a couple times and caught a beer after work now and then.  Nice guy, easy smile.  Good ideas.  Sharp sense of humor.

So it was that we were talking and laughing in the orange crackle of the flames as the big red ball of the sun inched toward the inky horizon, sipping beers and shooting the shit about nothing much in particular.  In our trunks and wind-dried t-shirts.  Adrian fished around in the pocket of his blue jeans, which were discarded over a dry driftwood branch near the fire.  “You get high?” he asked, producing a joint.  Every once in a while, I assured him, and soon enough we were wreathed in aromatic smoke and feeling gently euphoric in the last drowning beams of light, as dusk settled in.

It felt good to be hanging out with Adrian.  I always liked the guy, he seemed down to earth and sensible but he also had a lot of compassion for the people around him.  He treated everybody in our building great, from the janitors to the managers.  It was the mark of a future leader, I thought.  I admired that strength in him.  He was also just a naturally good looking guy, in great shape.  I’m generally what one calls a lady’s man, but I do occasionally feel a pull towards specimens of my own gender, and if I’m being honest with myself I found Adrian to be attractive, both physically and in his personality.  That night by the lake I couldn’t help but note that his trunks were kind of tight-fitting, too, outlining his smoothly muscled thighs and roundly cupping what was no doubt a nice package.

More Festival Scenes