While You Were Doing Easter, the Japanese Were Celebrating the Penis
Source – No, this isn’t an April Fools’ joke – there is actually a penis festival going on in Japan today. Yep, you read that right – a festival dedicated to penises is currently taking place in Kawasaki right now.
Incredible. Tens of thousands flock to Shinto Kanamara Matsuri each year as giant phalluses – some as big as fully grown men – parade through the streets in tribute to the penis. Also known as the Festival of the Steel Phallus – or Willy Festival – the annual celebration is held on the first Sunday of April at the Kanayama Shrine. Penis-shaped floats are held aloft during the sreet parades while both the young and old enjoy phallus-themed candy, chocolate and lollipops and pose with penis-shaped sculptures. …
Legend has it that in the Edo Period (1603-1868) a sharp-toothed demon who live inside a woman’s vagina castrated several men on their wedding nights. …
But a quick-thinking local blacksmith came to the rescue and forged a massive iron dildo to break the demon’s teeth.
And in honour of the Shinto deities of fertiliy, childbirth and protection, a three-foot steel phallus now sits in the shrine’s courtyard. Sex workers used to go the shrine to pray they would be protected from sexually transmitted diseases.
If this story sounds at all familiar, it might be because during the Winter Olympics I posted a blog about a Penis Park located an hour or so from PyeongChang that was the biggest off-site tourist attraction of the game. So I think it’s fair to say – without risk of being accused of stereotyping – that these Asian cultures are centuries ahead of us when it comes to the fine tradition of paying homage to the noble, magnificent penis.
I don’t know what it is about the United States. But while they were doing this in Kawasaki I was wearing a tie and standing around while my in laws kids searched the yard for plastic eggs. For all our high-minded talk about being a melting pot of Old World cultures, somehow we just can’t allow ourselves to have accepted this one. Music, cuisine, the arts, science, languages, technology, all can come to the States and find a home here. But try to hold a PenisFest and see how far you get before you’re charged with a hate crime. Try carrying an enormous pink wang down Main St. and keep your head on a swivel as the Women’s Studies majors pelt you with rocks and garbage. Try for one second to publicly give the ol’ Wife’s Best Friend the credit it deserves by handing out schlong lollipops or building a statue and be sure to let the rest of us know how life on the Sex Offender Registry is for you.
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Not that my ancestral culture is any better. The only way the Irish immortalize our own johnsons is to joke about curses. But the worst of Europe came to these shores with buckles on their hats, Bibles in their hands and a total uptight disregard for the regal, majestic babymaker it the proper credit it gets in the Far East. And so richly deserves.
So keep doing you, Kawasaki. I’m still trying to figure out how a country that holds Willy Festivals, sells ladies underwear in vending machines and leads the world in sex animation still digitizes out genitalia in your porn, but that’s a discussion for another day. In the meantime, on behalf of men who are very attached to our penises everywhere, thank you. One piece of advice though: Don’t do business with a prostitute who tries to prevent STDs with prayer. You’ll thank me later.