🏮 Saidai-ji Eyo

西大寺会陽

Higashi, Okayama (Saidaiji Temple (Kannonin) Grounds) · Every year in February

Traditional performing arts

160 days to go
Rooms around Higashi, Okayama fill up while the festival is on.

Saidaiji Eyo is a naked festival held at Saidaiji (Kannon-in) in Higashi Ward, Okayama City, and is organized by Kannon-in Saidaiji, a betto honzan (special head temple) of the Koyasan Shingon sect on Mt. Kinryu. It is held to coincide with the conclusion of the Shusho-e, a 14-day rite of strict practice that begins on New Year's Day of the old lunar calendar, and tens of thousands of worshippers come from near and far. The festival's origins date back to the Nara period, when the Shusho-e founded by the monk Jitchu was transmitted by the temple's founder, the monk Anryu. In the 7th year of Eisho (1510), when the monk Chua bestowed protective talismans on worshippers on the day the rite concluded, worshippers seeking good fortune fought over them, and in order to gain freedom of movement they stripped naked and performed misogi (ritual purification with water), which is said to have given rise to the present form of Eyo. The proceedings begin with a koto hajime ceremony three weeks earlier, and after the gathering and shaving of the material for the shingi (sacred wooden sticks) and 14 days of prayer rituals, the main event arrives. On the day itself, women announce the start with the Eyo drum, and women in white robes also perform misogi. At night, naked worshippers gather in the temple grounds raising the cry of "wasshoi wasshoi," and when the head priest drops the shingi wrapped with ujifuda (fortune talismans) from the Gofuku window, more than 30,000 worshippers engage in a fierce scramble, creating a stirring spectacle.