The ten or so ornately made-up transvestites gamely hoisted the platform with the seven-foot  tall shocking pink penis into the air and, surrounded by a generally inebriated and cheering crowd, began to chant and carry the bobbing phallus through the gate of the temple.

     Welcome to one of the most interesting parties in Japan; the Kanamara fertility festival. Amidst the “gaijin” or foreigner population, it is simply known as the “Penis Festival” because the male members flagrantly outnumber the sacred feminine organs in symbol, though there certainly seemed to be as many women as men present.

     There are thousands of colorful heathen festivals that occur all over Japan at many different places and times, some of them are Buddhist. This is not one of them. Most of the festivals in Japan spring from the uniquely Japanese form of Animistic Paganism called Shinto. Shinto means “Way” (TO) of the “Kami” or Gods/Spirits (SHIN).  It is as old as the hills, literally. Kami are energies-Gods-Spirits that can inhabit trees, waterfalls, rice-fields and lakes. They can also be ghosts, weird were-foxes or one of the “Seven Lucky Gods” adopted from India and China. Maybe. If this all sounds confusing and very open-ended it’s because it is. In many ways Shinto is a most pragmatic religion, if somebody encounters a “Power,” he or she makes a house for it (a shrine) and then asks it for stuff. If this works, far out. A priesthood develops, more people come to the shrine, it gets bigger, more stuff happens, then,maybe, more Kami come to visit and decide to stay. Or maybe the importance of the shrine declines, the Kami moves on and the cult goes kaput. So it goes. There is no dogma, no real organized priesthood and no doctrine on the afterlife. To paraphrase a vulgar but succinct observation, stuff happens. Kami make it happen. Stay cool, stay as pure as possible, give stuff to the Kami and be nice to them and you’ll get good things. You know, the usual: riches, health, fertile, fields, and, to bring us back to the Kanamara festival, fertile and fecund fornication. 

     Every Japanese festival commemorates some great happening in myth or history, whichever blends into which first. Very often this happening is also why the shrine is there in the first place, so the myth and festival introduces us to the Kami and it’s power and sort of brings it out and spreads it around. Great and big fun. It is only proper that we now divulge the myth that supposedly led to the Kanamara festival.

     Once, long ago, which is normally when these mythic moments occur, there was this super wild, beautiful, royal, powerful, perfect, intelligent, thoughtful and gracious woman living at what is today known as Kawasaki Daishi. All the handsome and virile men wanted to marry her, of course, or at least that’s what they said. She, in turn,  wanted a husband and kids, or at least that's what she said. BUT, and there is always some kind of horrific “but” in these situations, there was a slight problem that came to light on her wedding night. She , or rather her father, had chosen Mr. Right-san, rituals had been said  copious ammounts of sake drunk, and the newlyweds went to bed. Suddenly there was a hideous scream, I’m sure. It seems that her vagina had rather vicious teeth in it and they worked. Mr. Right-san, minus his member, went running forth in great pain to let all the guys know in his new high-pitched voice that his soon-to-be ex was, literally, a ball buster. Needless to say, this put a severe crimp on her social life and her bed remained a lonely place for a long time. Desperate to really lose her virginity, she and her rather leery father enticed several other men into her bed with promises and money, yet each ended up many inches shorter before the night was over and she still had her maidenhead. Into every deeply depressing situation, at least in myths, must come a hero and so appeared a most unlikely hero into this story in the form of the local village blacksmith. He took it upon himself to do a little extra work on the side and soon after volunteered to marry the girl, much to the horror of his friends and family. Yet all went well because on the night after the wedding he put his new improved freshly crafted iron penis to the test. All the vaginal teeth broke off, the poor woman finally lost her virginity and the blacksmith and her lived happily ever after breeding lots of kids. 

     This is the basis of the Kanamara festival but, well, there seems to be a lot more to all the phallus waving. Phallic worship is even older than the hills and, really, it doesn't matter what hills you are living in. For pretty obvious reasons the penis and vagina, or ling and yoni if one is attracted to euphemisms, have been venerated from time immemorial.Women and men have been coming to places like the Kawasaki Daishi Shrine for millions of years to ask the Gods or Kami for kids and other kinds of fertility. It would be quaint to think that the Japanese are unaware of this, except that on the second floor of the building next to the shrine is a “fertility museum!” There one will find lings and yoni and statues with big lings and blatantly open yoni and ling rocks and yoni paintings galore. Really, the best object was the foot-high Mickey Mouse with a six-inch fully erect . . . and some of the toys! Anyway, this stuff has been collected from all over the world, there were fertility idols and organs from Greece, India, England and China among other places. These people know full well what they are about!  Let's face it, Japan is not exactly a primitive third-world goldmine of quaint tribal rituals ripe for live-in anthropologists. These people were kicking our asses economically AND involved in explicit heathen practices. Think about it.
 

Cut to the transvestites hoisting the big day-glo penis. Let’s back up a bit to the beginning of the festival. There was a ceremony on April 7th, the night before the main festivities, but April 8th was really the the big day. Arriving at Kawasaki Daishi station, the shrine was not readily apparent. Rising above the drone of Japanese conversations, a gaijin voice could clearly be heard:   “There probably is a giant one around here to point the way.”      Thus the mood was set.      It must be admitted that the slight rain kept  huge crowds from coming to what would have been normally quite a popular celebration. But the giant pink penis sitting in state before the shrine proper that was, of course, the first thing seen, become an excellent advertisement for safe sex in that it was sheathed in sturdy plastic.

     This became a favorite photo background until the time it was carried off by the transvestites. As the rain petered, out  the flashbulbs began to flash and the ceremonies began. Two very respectable Shinto priests in full finery approached the pink phallus and the mikoshi or portable shrine that contained another large log ling. Prayers were said, hands were clapped, offerings were made, more prayers said and all was made holy. The priests were great, really. The chief priest looked so serious it hurt and the assistant could just manage to keep the grin off his face. It was the old “good-priest, bad-priest routine.”  It was only early afternoon by then but enough sake and beer was flowing to bring tears of joy to the local merchants. Speaking of which, there are really only a few places one can get some of the merchandise that was for sale that day and this festival was one of them. Over by the shrine you had your holy relics. Penis charms for fertility, penis charm bumper stickers to protect your car. Penis “emma” or hanging plaques with pictures on one side and a place to write your wish on the other. Many of the emma hung near the shrine contained wishes for children, not much of a surprise. You could get a wide variety of key chains with penises that became erect at the pull of a string, penises that turned into women or vaginas or mushrooms or various Gods or visa versa. There were the serious penis charms made out of, that’s right, you guessed it: iron. These could be worn or carried. There were lots of vagina jewelry also, my favorite being a key-chain that transformed from a skull into a blatantly proffered organ. Sex and death at its finest.  On the other side of the muddy but colorfully decorated compound was a huge booth covered with yellow penis emblazoned banners covered in kanji and the English phrase “Kid-Luck Candy.”  These fine and happy people were selling the most explicit lolly-pops one could imagine. There were several sizes and even a family collection I found irresistible. These kinds of things can be found in adult stores in America but most Americans are a bit too hung-up to walk around merrily sucking on them in public. Not the Japanese.
 

There was a booth with small imitation-ivory figurines that were as traditionally Japanese as they were inventive. There were penis-nosed festival masks, there were beautifully carved sets of members, there were overtly sexual gods and goddesses, there were wall hangings and bells and vases. An interior decorator with exotic tastes could have outfitted a house. It’s possible that several did, because as soon as the beginning ceremony ended the sun came out, the plastic came off the pink penis and sales became brisk.

     That was when the transvestites came out of the side building. I’m not sure of the significance of transvestites in this festival. My Japanese is too poor to really ask and even if it wasn’t, it's doubtful that anyone would have had any sort of explanation. These things are not rational and most Japanese just accept and enjoy. There were male and female transvestites. The best woman was a sailor, a nice touch, and carried a big phallic club. The men were not your run of the mill lovely transvestites. These men were, for the most part, not pretty by any stretch of the imagination, but they were wild as hell and did the best with what they had. What more could one ask? As I saw them gamely struggle through the mud with their stiletto heels I was filled with a strange kind of admiration. The pink penis was raised, as already described, and off it went to circumnavigate the neighborhood bringing fertility and prosperity to everybody, it was hoped. At the same time a gang of tipsey burly guys hoisted the mikoshi with the log-phallus in it and followed, yelling, chanting, stomping in the mud and generally having a ball. They did a kind of rocking thrusting dance with their symbolic burden before following the bobbing pink penis and raucous masses out of the gate and down the street. The significance of this can be ascertained with a bit of meditation. 
 

Those who did not follow this Dionysic procession used their time well in eating, drinking and spending. Upon exploration, the small but obviously popular ling shrine was discovered next to the larger shrine. This contained anatomically correct offerings sculptured from a variety of substances and lots of prayer plaques. There was also the grand daddy penis enshrined. It looked quite snug and content where it was, no need to parade that one. The approach to this smaller shrine was along a path that went through a long gateway covered with emma plaques. In the center of this was an object that created shock and amazement from some of the younger ladies who passed through. It was an ancient anvil with, that's right, a large iron penis securely welded to its center. Was this the iron penis? If not it was good enough for this crowd. The other really cool metal penis, steel I think, was set up in a sacred area next to the smaller shrine on a portable altar. It was about 18 inches or so high and remarkably crafted. Great hilarity reined here as various people picked it up, posed for photos with it, thrust it at friends and strangers and generally horsed. The cleverest thing about it was that when lifted a separate base was revealed and this contained a remarkably accurate vagina.      A last note on thrusting lings. There were a variety of phalluses in evidence at the festival and they were all considered fair game for “hands-on” participation. The 15 foot telephone-pole penises were handily leaned against benches for straddling, jumping on, hanging from and generally using in ways that only the joyfully inebriated can think of. Many an innocent was poked with a huge styrofoam strap-on penis that made the rounds of the festival a number of times. In general, things were done the photographic evidence of which probably discretely disappeared later on in many peoples apartments.

Gratuitous butt shot of festival goer.