Future of Japan’s ‘naked festival’ in doubt after 3 men left unconscious

Three men remain unconscious after a crush at one of Japan’s best-known traditional festivals, casting a shadow over a 500-year-old rite that draws thousands of nearly naked participants each winter. The incident occurred shortly after 10pm on Saturday at the annual “naked festival” at Saidaiji Kannon-in Temple in Okayama City, where an estimated 10,000 men wearing only mawashi loincloths packed into the temple’s main hall to seize one of two sacred wooden sticks known as shingi. Six men were...

By Julian Ryall