File picture of men cleansing their bodies in a river during the Sominsai festival at Kokuseki-ji Temple in Japan
| Photo Credit: Reuters
A steam of sweat rose as hundreds of naked men tussled over a bag of wooden talismans, performing a dramatic end to a thousand-year-old ritual in Japan that took place for the last time.
Their passionate chants of jasso, joyasa (“evil, be gone”) echoed through a ceder forest of the northern Japan’s Iwate region, where the secluded Kokuseki Temple has decided to end the popular annual rite.
The Sominsai festival, regarded as one of the strangest festivals in Japan, is the latest tradition impacted by the country’s ageing population crisis that has hit rural communities hard.
Organising the event, which draws hundreds of participants and thousands of tourists every year, has become a heavy burden for the ageing local faithful, who find it hard to keep up with the rigours of the ritual. “It is very difficult to organise a festival of this scale,” said Daigo Fujinami, a resident monk of the temple that opened in 729. “You can see what happened today — so many people are here and it’s all exciting. But behind the scenes, there are many rituals and so much work that have to be done,” he said.
“This is the last of this great festival that has lasted 1,000 years. I really wanted to participate in this festival,” Yasuo Nishimura a caregiver from Osaka, said.
From next year, Kokuseki Temple will replace the festival with prayer ceremonies and other ways to continue its spiritual practices.
“Japan is facing a falling birthrate, ageing population, and lack of young people to continue various things,” Mr. Nishimura said. “Perhaps it is difficult to continue the same way as in the past.”