The Naked Man Festival video was just uploaded to YouTube. Warning, the sound track might be a little loud…
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The first photos from Nagoya’s Naked Man Festival. More will be available at my agent’s website and my own portfolio. This event was held as snow from the previous two days was still fresh and melting, so of course the participants need to be rolling drunk to do this, which means some fall over and scrap themselves on the ground. Also, a late afternoon cold wind whipped up so the ambulance crews arrived, perhaps to treat those suffering hypothermia.The Naked Man Festival (hadaka matsuri) is an annual event that began in the year 767ad, in the Nara Period. The event is held to removed bad luck and bestow good luck on the people. In the past, this event has attracted 180,000 spectators and 12,000 (naked) male participants.
The event features a number of motifs, including teams based on township, giving gifts to the Kounomiya shrine, being drunk on sake, climbing bamboo poles, giving strips of cloth to spectators (mainly to women), and more. The gifts that are given to the shrine include a tuna, a barrel of sake, banners and long bamboo poles. For the first time visitor the bamboo poles seem to be the most important part. The teams carry all of these things, and stop along the way to throw their bamboo pole up, erecting it, and someone will climb it. It seems that each town’s bamboo poles are different. I guess that the more support from the town equates to a bigger and better bamboo pole. These poles are wrapped in cloth and lashed with rice-hemp rope. The event is held according the the lunar calendar at about the second weekend after the Lunar New Year. More information can be found at the English Wikipedia site.
The Naked Man Festival (hadaka matsuri) is an annual event that began in the year 767ad, in the Nara Period. The event is held to removed bad luck and bestow good luck on the people. In the past, this event has attracted 180,000 spectators and 12,000 (naked) male participants.
The Naked Man Festival (hadaka matsuri) is an annual event that began in the year 767ad, in the Nara Period. The event is held to removed bad luck and bestow good luck on the people. In the past, this event has attracted 180,000 spectators and 12,000 (naked) male participants.
More information from a blog post for the 2009 event:
The Naked Man Festival (Hadaka Matsuri) is an annual even held at Kounomiya, just outside of Nagoya City in central Japan. It’s held in the depths of winter and is a weekend-long event. The part that the public sees (and is shown in my portfolios) is held in the afternoon. The event date varies from year to year, according to the Chinese lunar calendar, but is held during the lunar New Year.
It began over 1,200 years ago, in the year 767, when Nara was the capital of Japan. At that time, there were plagues affecting the Japanese people, so Emperor Shotoku ordered special prayers to be said nation wide. The governor of Owari Province (now Aichi Prefecture) asked the shrine at Kounomiya to do something about this, and to remove the bad luck. So, the Naked Man Festival, held in the coldest time in winter was formulated.
Tags: festival, hadaka, hadaka matsuri, japan, japanese, matsuri, nagoya, naked man
It’s rare that Nagoya gets snow, and this winter is one of those ‘once in seven year’ events. These photos will soon be available on Asia Photo Connection.
Company employees carefully crossing the street in icy conditions on a snowy day.
A construction worker clearing snow off a pedestrian path in front of Nagoya Station.
This POTW is of the Kounomiya Naked Man Festival, an annual event held just after the Lunar New Year, a calendar that Japan used to follow until the post war years. It’s not often I post an image from my agents website, but it’s there, and more information on the history is on this blog.
NAGOYA - JAPAN, 7 february 2009: the naked man festival (hadaka matsuri) was held. this annual event began in the year 767ad, in the nara period. the event is held to removed bad luck and bestow good luck on the people. the event this year attracted 180,000 spectators and 12,000 (naked) male participants.
Wishing you all a very happy New Year, and the best wishes for 2012. Let’s hope that 2012 treats you well.
A Japanese New Year decoration
Tags: decoration, japan, japanese, new year
This is an annual event, and I was able to attend today. Here is the first of many photos that will be available on my Asia Photo Connection and PhotoShelter portfolios.
Suzuki’s new concept car that is reportedly able to achieve a stunning 32km/l, albeit with a 800cc (0.8lt) turbo charged engine. It looks great, but it looks like an angry cartoon character… an Angry ‘Zuki?
Tags: car, car show, concept car, nagoya, nagoya motor show, suzuki
And Photo of the Week (POTW)
It’s two years since the first blog post. The website was already a few weeks old, but it took a while to design and finalise the website, and then must up a few words for the first official blog post… nothing sensational though. The first important post was to promote a set of photos of Tado Gagaku, a traditional court music group playing Sino-Japanese instruments in traditional garb. This little blog has come a long way since then. See more of these at my agent’s website: Asia Photo Connection by Henry Westheim.
A performer of Tado Gagaku playing the sho (cheng)
Tags: cheng, gaku, japan, japanese, music, sho, tado gagaku, traditional
This Photo of the Week is especially for the editors who are preparing months in advance, I hope this one doesn’t come too late. This is the annual Naked Man Festival, which is held in the depth of winter, usually in early March. Yes, it can be snowing, raining, icy, you name it, and this event is still held. Here is an extract of some information I wrote earlier:
It began over 1,200 years ago, in the year 767, when Nara was the capital of Japan. At that time, there were plagues affecting the Japanese people, so Emperor Shotoku ordered special prayers to be said nation wide. The governor of Owari Province (now Aichi Prefecture) asked the shrine at Kounomiya to do something about this, and to remove the bad luck. So, the Naked Man Festival, held in the coldest time in winter
More photos of this event can be found at my agent’s, Henry Westheim, site Asian Photo Connection and at my PhotoShelter portfolio.
My New Year’s routine is to go to a local Buddhist Temple to see in the New Year and take my turn to toll the bell, and then to a Shrine to eat warm oudon and drink my first (and usually only) sake for the year, and in the morning to see the first sunrise. I went out really early in the morning on the 1st January 2011 to get sunrise pictures. It’s not my preferred subject, but it’s special to Japanese people, to send New Years cards that feature a sunrise, especially the first one of the year. We send Christmas cards, they send New Year cards to their friends. That day I took a friend out with me to take him to see one of my favourite sunrise pictures ever, which I happen to have taken. Unfortunately, we were about 500m too far to the left, and so we missed getting the sun rising through a local amusement park (see link for that picture). As a consequence and with some irony, I just photographed on anyway, shooting the rising sun with a smoke stack / cooling tower in view.
Every time I’m out there alone I wonder what the year will bring, what will happen in the coming year. Will it be exciting or uneventful? On the 1st January 2011, the first day of the new year there was hope, optimism, potential for everyone in Japan. Below is a video of the photographs I took to commemorate the day of a new and potentially exciting year, a year that many would rather forget, but will always be remembered. There was too much irony for me to ignore these photographs.
My best new year photos are on my agent’s website, Asian Photo Connection by Henry Westheim, and here is a search for “Japanese New Year“, and many of those photos (including the boats, dog, etc) were taken on 1st January, 2011.
Sunrises are often used on New Year cards in Japan
Tags: disaster, earth, hope, irony, japan, japanese, new year, nuclear disaster, optimism, sunrise, tsunami
On Saturday late afternoon I went to Yokkaichi Port. Apparently there are great industrial night views to enjoy there. Well… you only live once. Below is a sample of the ‘you only live once’ photos, and more have been submitted to my portfolio at Asia Photo Connection, so they should be there soon. Please check them out and buy them.
Some facts about Yokkaichi and Yokkaichi Port.
Yokkaichi is a major international container port, shipping well known Japanese products like the Honda cars, flash memory, tea, ceramics, and more to San Francisco, Sydney, Hong Kong, and other destinations in Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. It was established as a “modern city” at the end of the Meiji Restoration, at the time of when the Emperor was reinstated as the ruler of Japan (construction of the port was completed in 1899). In the 1960′s many people suffered “Yokkaichi asthma”, due to the toxic pollution emitted into the air by the oil refineries and factories. Yokkaichi receives much of Japan’s oil from the Middle East and some of it is refined there. Still today, many Japanese and foreign residents joke about the air quality in Yokkaichi, especially since a lot of electricity is generated in that area by combustion, including the burning of household and office rubbish and imported oil.
Much of this information was found on Wikipedia/Yokkaichi.
Tags: japan, japanese, oil refinery, pollution, port, shipping, yokkaichi