Stock photos of Japan, Japanese culture, and life
You are currently browsing articles tagged japan.
In the rush to catch up with post processing the Naked Man festival photos, I didn’t have the chance to remember to do this POTW… well, I just plain forgot. Here is one more hurrah from the weekend, a township team showing respect to the shrine after delivering their bamboo pole and other offerings.
Tags: festival, hadaka, hadaka matsuri, japan, japanese, naked man, potw
The Naked Man Festival video was just uploaded to YouTube. Warning, the sound track might be a little loud…
Tags: festival, hadaka, hadaka matsuri, japan, japanese, matsuri, naked man
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.
I did what I’m calling a “portrait walk”, where I met a friend who agreed to be a model, and we walked from point A to point B in the centre of Nagoya. As you can see she’s looking great, very fashionable… but cold, and hence the puffy jacket (and I froze, too). It was a great chance for me to get a handful of photos I’d been meaning to get, including someone shopping; using a drink vending machine; a mobile phone used in the open; and expectantly, she is great with a spinning top!
It was interesting, she asked ‘why a vending machine?’. A natural enough question for a Japanese person; vending machines are everywhere, and they are so ubiquitous that they are nothing special. I pointed out that vending machines in Japan are as much of a symbol of Japan as Big Ben is to London, or the Eiffel Tower is to Paris. A point you might miss that is quite interesting. In winter, they change the settings of some some part of the machine to heat a selection of drinks. All the drinks with red price labels are hot, whilst all the ones that are blue are chilled. Most drinks price in the range of 110yen to 150yen.
The vending machine we shot could take money in four forms being of course coins, notes, Manaca card, and Waon card. Manaca is an embedded ic-chip card that just needs to touch a sensor surface for credit to be transferred. The Manaca is used mainly as a regular commuter access card, but can also be used in many convenience stores and vending machines in Nagoya. I don’t know if it’s usable in other places like Osaka or Tokyo, but I think they have their own systems instead. Finally, I have little idea of what the Waon card is. I think the Waon card might be connected to the Aeon shopping mall conglomerate.
Tags: city, fashion, japan, japanese, lady, nagoya, pose, sakae, shopping, stock, vending machine, woman
This POTW is in celebration of Estonian Baruto and his first tournament win the January Tokyo Sumo Tournament. There is already suggestion that if he wins the next tournament he could become one of two top-ranked wrestlers (a ‘yokuzuna’). The only yokuzuna at the moment is Mongolian Hakuho. Currently, all the top wrestlers, who have a chance at becoming top-ranked are non-Japanese. The Japanese media emphasis this point and the media hang their hopes on Japanese Kisenosato.
Baruto is in the blue mawashi, on the left.
Kisenosato is on the left, facing the camera.
In sumo news
Estonian, Baruto (Kaido Höövelson; left, blue mawashi), won his first sumo tournament. He is the new kid on the block, an has ascended the ranks of sumo quite fast whilst gathering many fans in Japan. He was undefeated until today when he faced top-ranked wrestler Hakuho (who defeated him), but still Baruto had enough wins to secure the tournament and the Emperor’s Cup. His mother flew from Estonia to sit with his wife in the crowd to see him claim the tournament. Upto this point, everything about Baruto’s win today mirror’s Bulgarian Koto-oshu and Mongolian Harumafuji’s ascents. However, Koto-oshu and Harumafuji have only won one Emperor’s Cup, and haven’t returned to the fiery form they displayed ahead of their first (and only) tournament wins.
Tags: baruto, japan, japanese, sumo, tournament
The Japanese yen has bounced around quite a bit recently. Actually, Japanese companies have been taking a battering, as the US dollar drops in value, and the Euro discovers it’s got nothing propping it up, so the Yen is the next best safe haven if you can’t or for some other reason, won’t get gold. In truth, Japan is deep in debt, and needs customers (the US) to buy. If Americans don’t buy, then the whole country will whither or remain stagnant. So one could say that Japan needs to economise, why print a 2,000yen note, when you could just keep a restricted production run of 1,000, 5,000, and 10,000 yen notes?
Note that “Nippon Ginko” means “Bank of Japan” (the central bank for Japan).
Tags: 2000, currency, economy, japan, japanese, money, nippon ginko, the bank of japan, trade, yen
