KANAMARA FESTIVAL: SURROUNDED BY THREE BIG PENISES
Penis worship is nothing new. I worship mine, you worship yours, it's normal. The celebration of the male genitalia has and is still done throughout the world. But would you believe there is actually a festival dedicated to the most precious thing to a man in JAPAN? Yes, that's right, these timid and shy people pay homage to the penis but in their own unique way through the 'Kanamara Festival of the Iron Phallus'. At the increasingly popular Kanamara Festival, you will see large amounts of local Japanese and an increasing number of foreigners visiting from all parts of the world. Everyone has an awesome time eating, drinking, and finding themselves involved in various “shenanigans” while three big metal penis are paraded around. Sounds interesting right? Here are the details of this wonderful festival.
KANAMARA FESTIVAL VISITOR'S INFORMATION
NAME: Kanamara Matsuri (Iron Phallus Festival). WHERE: Kanayama Shrine in Kawasaki (Between Tokyo and Yokohama). WHEN: Every first Sunday in April. Proceedings start at 10 am and finish around 4 pm. COST: Free to watch. However, you will want to purchase the various illustrations, candy, carved vegetables and decorations as a souvenir. Be careful who you give them to as they will be penis shaped.
THE TALE OF THE KANAMARA FESTIVAL
The Kanamara Festival started in 1969 to remember the tale of an evil razor-toothed demon that fell in love with a young woman. When rejected, it hid inside the vagina of that young woman. I can hear you wondering “how big must the va-jay-jay have been?”, don’t even try to work out the dynamics... Anyway, the young woman managed to get married, then on the wedding night, the woman’s new husband had the unfortunate experience of having his knob bitten off and left with a stump by the demon in the young woman’s pussy. Finally, she sought help, for some reason from a blacksmith. A priest would have been better but there isn’t really a handbook for this type of thing I guess. This helpful blacksmith made a rock hard metal like dildo ornament which presumably the woman stuck into herself and thus tricked the demon into thinking it was her husband. Being evil the demon wanted to cause more misery and bite down. But instead of enjoying some man meat it was left with shattered teeth. This is the end of the tale.
BUT I HAVE SOME QUESTIONS
There does not appear to be any word of where or what happened to the demon. Did the demon stay there and just gum the husband/other man/men when they made love or leave and return to the underworld? Did the married couple stay married? I would not want to stay married to a woman whose vagina ate my penis. Even if she says the demon has left. I also doubt that the woman would want a stumpy husband who probably could not satisfy her needs too. How stupid did the demon think the man was to try again? Or did the demon figure that the woman had found another guy? Why no caution?
THE KANAMARA FESTIVITIES
The Kanamara Festival reminds me of Danjiri in Osaka. Except there is no running and 3 penises are paraded through the streets which are lined with merchants selling their goods. There are also live bands and traditional dancing and drumming performances which add to the festival atmosphere. In the past, Kanayama Shrine was a popular place to pray for prostitutes who wanted protection from STD/Is. It is believed in modern times that praying here can help with business prosperity, producing offspring as well as keeping a marriage happy. The festival is a popular tourist attraction and is used to raise awareness and money for HIV research.
MY PERSONAL KANAMARA FESTIVAL EXPERIENCE
Lastly, I want to leave you with my very own Kanamara Penis Festival story. I attended Kanamara Matsuri way back in 2005 with my then girlfriend. The plan was to go to a concert in Tokyo on the Friday, hangout with friends on the Saturday, go to Kawasaki to see the festival and return to Osaka on the Monday. Good times were had on each day. The penis festival was a lot of fun, although very crowded. We bought souvenirs, as you would expect, then got the train to Yokohama to spend the night. The next day we rested on the Shinkansen all the way to Shin-Osaka where we had to change lines to get home. We were lucky, the train home was not too crowded, so we got a seat opposite some teenage boys in front of us with some elderly gentlemen next to them. After some time I noticed the boy's faces were all lit up as they stared in our direction. One of the elderly gentlemen had leaned in towards us and seemed very curious. Is it me, the blue-eyed foreigner they are gawking at? What’s going on here? NOPE, it wasn’t me. It was my hot Japanese girlfriend who had decided to take out a long piece of candy shaped like a huge chin-chin (Japanese for penis) she had bought at the festival. I guess the people opposite us enjoyed watching her eat the candy. As I did for a few seconds before realizing that she was my girlfriend and I probably had to say something... The moral of the story. Be careful where and when you bust out the Kanamara Festival penis-shaped souvenirs...
