🏮 Zentsuji Daieyo

善通寺大会陽

Zentsuji, Kagawa (Zentsuji Temple) · Every year on the 4th Saturday of February

166 days to go
Rooms around Zentsuji, Kagawa fill up while the festival is on.

Zentsuji Daieyo, held every February at the head temple Zentsuji in Zentsuji City, Kagawa Prefecture, is a New Year event of the Shingon sect known as a hadaka matsuri (naked festival) in which naked men compete to seize a sacred wooden stick. The name "Eyo" means encountering the bright and gracious spirit of spring, and it is also called fukubai, an event held to pray for the elimination of calamity and the invitation of good fortune for the year. The origin lies in the Vimalakirti assembly held by Fujiwara no Kamatari at Kofukuji Temple in Nara, and at Zentsuji it has a history of about four hundred years. Although it declined after World War II, around 1955 the Zentsuji Chamber of Commerce and Industry took the lead in reviving it as a citizens' festival. Even today, about 60 percent of its budget is covered by donations from citizens, making it an event deeply rooted in the local community. On the day, participants first purify themselves with mizugori in the Hojo Pond within the temple grounds, then perform ji-oshi, passing under pillars strung with shimenawa ropes. At night, a pair of male and female sacred wooden sticks and a secondary stick are thrown down from the second story of the five-story pagoda, and the naked men in loincloths compete to seize that fortune. The one who takes a sacred stick is called a fukuotoko (lucky man), and the fierce, full-contact struggle of the participants has become a well-known sign that spring has come to the Sanuki region.