Fundoshi Ressurection!

My apologies for the long absence! Back in April, the blog stopped working. I could upload all I wanted, but the blog would neither save nor publish. It was very frustrating. It still is frustrating... in fact this is just a test post to see if my temporary workaround solution.

This represents the longest gap in fundoshi posts since I started the blog eight years ago, and I have missed delivering great fundoshi-themed content to a worldwide audience. As soon as I can work out the publishing glitch, I pledge to get back on track with weekly posts. There's certainly an abundance of superb fundoshi related content coming from the four corners of the globe nearly every day!

While I wrangle with blogger, I've made sure the Fundoshi 4 All tumblr churns out daily content. So if you're in need of a fundoshi fix, check here: http://fundoshi4all.tumblr.com

Thank you for your patience and support, and check out some of my recent fundoshi finds after the jump!

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:

Reader Submissions: ShyC and Samuel

Fundoshi4All! probably wouldn't have been around this long without an amazing support network of fundoshi enthusiasts from all over the globe. A long time ago when this was just a fledgling blog and I wasn't sure if I would be able to find others interested in fundoshi, a few people stepped forward and shared their experiences and stories, along with original content they had created. ShyC has been along on this journey with me for several years now. Like me, he makes a lot of his own fundoshi. He also creates original undergarments and fetish gear out of re-purposed fabric and other items. A creative, kinky mind sits on his sexy shoulders!

I'm pleased to share a trove of images he sent me earlier this month! Included with the fundoshi pictures are a couple of his handmade creations. The last image is a dark blue langot he made. I think everyone knows how fascinated I am with langots! Following ShyC's photos are some spectacular images of another reader, Samuel.

This is also the last scheduled post for 2016. I hope everyone will have a wonderful new year! I look forward to sharing more with you in 2017.

Crotch Architecture

 Male genitalia is beautiful to many men and women alike, but to many others (dare I say most), the penis and scrotum are humorous, awkward, or even ugly. I don't agree with this viewpoint personally, but many think that the cock and balls abruptly break the smooth, aerodynamic, or muscular lines of the male form. No doubt this was one of the contributing factors to the invention of clothing, along with the delicacy and sensitivity of the masculine apparatus and the very obvious nature of male arousal.

A combination of social and practical factors more than likely led to the loincloth, as a way to protect the genitals from harm from daily activities and as a way to obscure arousal. Even in societies where nudity is accepted, displaying arousal publicly can be seen as distasteful or even aggressive. Imagine the control that young men raised in such communities must develop over arousal!

Early loincloths may have been like skirts or aprons, roughly hewn bits of leather or fur belted onto the hips. With the creation and perfection of textiles however came a refining and perfecting of this basic essential attire all across the globe. Culturally identifiable variations on the loincloth like the Aztec maxtlatl, the Thai pakawma, the Indian langot, and the Japanese fundoshi appeared and their wearing became a highly developed and nearly ritualistic uniform. Many of these loincloths, where still worn, have not changed basic form in a millennium.

While some examples like the langot and the ettchu-style of fundoshi continue to use ties around the waist, most of the others are worn through a simple combination of looping, twisting, and friction. In the case of rokushaku fundoshi especially, a symmetrical appearance is achieved through a basic formula that must go back at least 1,200 years. What this does to the male crotch is: it holds the genitalia near the body for safety and support, it smooths the appearance of the crotch, and it provides an athletic V-shape that does not intentionally obscure the genital region. If anything, fundoshi accentuates the genitals of the wearer, not in a prideful way but in an acknowledgement of the masculine form and function, and with as little extra fabric as possible.

Fundoshi is a superb design, a supportive undergarment created for activity and comfort, with the usual Japanese attentiveness to ingenious form and minimal simplicity. A thousand years later, as I sit typing in my fundoshi, I feel uniquely blessed by those who perfected the Japanese loincloth (likely Shinto monks). Their design has persisted through the centuries because of it's engineering and its architectural beauty. It is a fine addition to the natural beauty of the male body.

Senegal: Laamb Wrestlers and False Lions

The African nation of Senegal contains a number of fascinating cultures and social customs. In the past, we have briefly turned the lens away from the Japanese fundoshi loincloth to spotlight other loincloths such as the langot of India. Just as the langot is used as an athletic garment for kushti wrestling in India, an analogous garment is used for the highly physical wrestling art known as Laamb in the Wolof dialect, or commonly called Lutte Senegalaise in French.

A parallel tradition involves dancers called Simbs, or False Lions, whose ornate red, black, white, and yellow body paint and elaborate costumes create striking imagery next to the imposing, more austerely attired wrestlers.

If you'd like to know more about Wolof wrestling, read this article.

To see a collection of photographs from Senegal of grapplers and dancers, read on!

Unplanned Post

It seems nearly everyone on the planet had a friend in Bowie, a man who fearlessly and publicly introduced us to new things. He brought his sincerity into everything he did. Enclosed are some photos from his award winning portrayal of John Merrick in the play The Elephant Man.

Here is a very illuminating interview from that 1980 including some rare excerpts from the Broadway production of the play.

I've also include some photos of Bowie wearing one of the famous knit outfits designed for him by Kansai Yamamoto during his Ziggy Stardust period. It's nothing like a fundoshi but it reflects Bowie's gender-crossing visual appeal.

Wearing a loincloth or a knit catsuit, or for that matter a dress, David humanized and publicized the many and various roles he inhabited. He painted, he wrote, he read, he acted and sang. He lost a decade by his own admission to drugs. He spoke eloquently on behalf of many marginalized communities. He even made me feel more normal! On top of that, he wrote scores of amazing songs over a recording career spanning forty years. If you listen, these songs question many of our accepted truths about life as it is and burn with moments of intense humanity.

David Bowie pushed the envelope and I am very grateful for his work. He also quite clearly had fun doing it. I hope we can all catch a ray of his scattered light.

Return Of The Langot

Visually, India's langot loincloth is a cousin of the rokushaku fundoshi, but the similarity mostly ends there. The ties that secure the langot around the wasit make it more similar to the relaxed fit of the etchu fundoshi. As we'll see, the langot is a robust garment designed with athleticism in mind:

Fundoshi Gatherings

As the number of people interested in fundoshi swells, the geography between us shrinks. Who knows how many fundoshi-wearers there are in a square kilometer? Or in your city or province?

The possibilities of meet-ups and parties is always a fun one to contemplate. Whether it be two individuals meeting up to hang out, or a gathering of fundoshi-clad revelers, there's no end to the possibilities! I thought it might be fun to write out some fundoshi-specific etiquette for such occasions:

1. Always carry a spare fundoshi.

2. Bring a new fundoshi to share. If everyone brings an extra, a fun exchange can happen and everyone can go home with a new fundoshi! Maybe a unique pattern or a fabric you particularly like? Make sure to get lots of pictures and send them to Fundoshi4All!

(More after the jump)

Meet the Readers: Svadisthana

We last saw Dean in these pages in April and since then he's been pretty busy! Besides a life schedule that widely incorporates fundoshi into his yoga and spiritual practices, he's started up five inter-related blogs under the Svadisthana title that explore different facets of sensuality – from gently poetic eroticism to unfettered raw sexiness!

And here they are!!

Svadisthana portrays the journey of the soul/self (the spirituality) within the body which in turns travels through space and time (nature). The journey is winding and always changeable (ego/mood).  The link is fundoshi, which takes on the form of a deity (a familiar icon) that can be perceived with the senses in a way of actuating the link between spirituality and nature.

Svadisthana II draws attention to the fetishes (specific likes) of the false ego, in this case the look of the male body in male underwear, sports and formal clothing in various states of undress. The mood is both provocative and narcissic.

Svadisthana III focusses on the false ego's identity as more subtle than the gross body and this is reflected in the subtle use of partial or full nudity.

Svadisthana IV portrays the false ego's identity as a MALE human being in it's purest form revealing the potency of lingam, and signifying the natural means of creation. 

Svadisthana V portrays an intimate visual reference of the male human body's erotic nature.

Sleeping Dragon!

For all the years that I've been interested in fundoshi, Sleeping Dragon has been a source of inspiration and an amazing fountain of intoxicating fundoshi pictures.  Besides fundoshi, he's interested in a wide range of BDSM and is an excellent erotic storyteller.  I want to feature a few of my favorite photos of his in gratitude.

Thank you, for all the imaginative and magnetically sexy pictures, stories, and other contributions you make!

Fundoshi Advertisements

I'm always interested in seeing advertisements, fliers, book and record covers or catalog pages that depict fundoshi!  Here are a few I've gathered:

The Fundoshi!

 

Fundoshi Selfies

There is a saying among shutterbugs, "the best camera is the one you have with you."  While everyone reading this is a fundoshi-wearer or at least a fundoshi-lover, probably not all of us would consider ourselves "photographers" by any stretch of the word.  Yet I'd be willing to bet that at least 1/3 of all fundoshi pictures I've found online are self-pics.  There's something hot and exhibitionistic about capturing your breathless, most likely hard self in a quick snapshot after you've wrapped yourself in a bolt of soft cotton.

I've chosen to feature photos where the camera is visible, instead of just suggested by the subject's psoture or the presence of a mirror. These selfies say "look at my fundoshi-clad body, look at my bulge, look at my ass." They are shy and not shy all at once.  And I hope they inspire you to get out your camera, or your phone, or your web cam and snap some shots of your own fundoshi -- I'll be glad to feature them in the reader gallery!

Fundoshi Social

If it can squirt juice, our society covers it up.  If it changes shape during sexual arousal, we shroud it in secrecy.  Thus, the female nipple, which gives milk, is forbidden, but the visually near-identical male nipple, which doesn't, causes nary a ripple -- even in "family" publications!  It seems arbitrary, but it also creates the mystique and sensuous tension that a garment like the fundoshi introduces into the proceedings.  It becomes an "interval" in our arousal, foreplay, and sexual imagination -- a stop along the way to the juice squirting part.  By itself, it often initiates the shape changing part.  

Flashback to The Blue Lagoon

Maybe the closest the silver screen has come in recent memory to a sensuous, sensitive representation of a fundoshi-style garment is the wrapped loincloth displayed stunningly by 18-year old actor Christopher Atkins in the 1980 version of The Blue Lagoon.

Atkins, a curly headed and bronzed blonde, wore the loincloth quite well, stoking the libidinous fire of many an 80s teen magazine reader, and the onscreen chemistry with a scandalously young Brooke Shields no doubt ignited many a latent sex drive.  The film's theme of sexual awakening by two stranded teenagers, discovering love on their own far away from any of society's or adult influences, struck a chord with many viewers, as did the film's gorgeous cinematography.  I'm sure I've posted about this before, because like many people of my generation, this was our first glimpse of physical love -- a controversial movie featuring two beautiful young stars, lots of sun-dappled blue water, and of course Chris Atkins resplendent in his fundoshi-like loincloth.

Fundoshi At The Dawn Of Time!?

 
In Ridley Scott's recent film Prometheus, humanoid aliens called "Engineers" are depicted at the dawn of time, wearing long gray hooded robes.  One of them disrobes, and, wearing only a loincloth that bears more than a passing resemblance to this blog's own beloved fundoshi, ingests a seething black globular substance that breaks down his DNA rapidly, sending his dissolved remains plummeting over the edge of a waterfall and into the waters of a planet we can only assume was Earth.

So in the universe of Prometheus, the fundoshi has an ancestor/architect just as humanity does!  A fun thought for today.  There are a few more pictures of the loincloth-clad Engineer after the break.

...But is it a Fundoshi?

Even in cases where the answer is technically (or even emphatically) no, these variations on the site's theme are definitely eye-magnets.

Reminds me fondly of my early days making a Tarzan outfit with a shoelace and a chamois cloth, or red handkerchief loincloths tied at the corners, or arranging a bath towel around my hips in different ways: standing in front of the bathroom mirror, trying out various configurations, cutting up old underwear and t-shirts with scissors, discovering my dad's bikini briefs and packs of condoms in his dresser, even taping together some diapers I'd snitched from my church's nursery to make one that would fit my teenage hips...

Who hasn't fashioned a home-made loincloth at some point?

State of the Loincloth: Can It Really Come Back If It Never Went Away?

No one really knows when the loincloth first appeared -- no one was keeping track apparently! Written history goes back about 5-6,000 years, and the loincloth has been there for the whole ride. One thing is certain, loincloths are cross-cultural, appearing throughout Asia, Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. The one place where there is no real occurrence of loincloths, however, is northern Europe, where pants seem to have evolved (no doubt due to the cooler northern climate) independently. Perhaps this explains Westerners' fixation on the "exoticism" of loincloths, when in fact it is Western-style pants that were the global rarity?