Konomiya Hadaka Matsuri

The proper name is Naoi Shinji. The shrine says it goes back to 767, when the governor of Owari province held prayers at Owari Okunitama Shrine to drive away a plague. According to the Aichi prefectural tourism site, the present form, with men going naked in the cold, took shape at the end of the Edo period. Before the festival the shrine gathers volunteers and chooses one of them by lot as the naoinin, better known as the shin-otoko. On the day, groups of naked men from the surrounding districts carry naoi-zasa, bamboo branches hung with cloths on which people who cannot strip themselves have written their names, ages and prayers against misfortune. The earliest groups arrive around noon, and they run the bamboo into the hall of worship with a shout. At 15:00 the shin-otoko comes out, guarded, into the men packed along the approach. They believe that touching him rids them of their own misfortune, so they all rush him at once, and the shoving is fierce. Once he has taken on everyone's misfortune and reached the Naoiden hall, the ritual ends. The night is not over for him. At 3:00 the next morning, in the Yonaoi Shinji, he is given a cake of earth said to hold the misfortunes of the world to carry on his back and is driven out of the shrine grounds with a large sacred bell and tsubute, small missiles made from peach and willow twigs. He drops the earth cake on his way home. The day before, a giant kagami mochi of about four tonnes, 2.35 metres tall, is offered at the shrine. It is cut up the day after the festival and handed out at the Naoiden.