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Japan, apparently, has a winter festival where 10,000 men in loincloths wrestle in the snow

Hadaka Matsuri — Japan's loincloth festival — has thousands fighting over sacred sticks in February cold. The Okayama version is over 500 years old.

· 2 min read · By Daichi
Thousands of men in white fundoshi loincloths packed into a Japanese temple courtyard at night during Hadaka Matsuri
◇  Thousands of men in white fundoshi loincloths packed into a Japanese temple courtyard at night during Hadaka Matsuri

Ten thousand men. February. Almost no clothes.

On the third Saturday of February, in a temple courtyard in Okayama, roughly 10,000 men strip down to white fundoshi loincloths and tabi socks, get cold-water-purified, and then spend hours shoving each other in a steaming, shoulder-to-shoulder scrum trying to grab one of two 20-cm sacred wooden sticks (shingi) thrown into the crowd at midnight.

It is freezing. There are injuries every year. It is also one of the oldest festivals still running in Japan.

The fact

The most famous version is the Saidaiji Eyō Hadaka Matsuri at Saidai-ji Kannon-in temple, near Okayama City. It has been held annually for over 500 years — by some accounts, since 1510. Whoever grabs a shingi and gets it out of the crowd into a tub of rice is named fukuotoko (福男, “lucky man”) for the year, and is said to receive a year of good fortune.

Smaller “naked festivals” run all winter across Japan — Iwate, Aichi, and elsewhere — but Saidaiji is the canonical scrum. A historic 2024 edition included women participants for the first time, in happi coats rather than fundoshi.

Why it works this way

The festival evolved out of a Heian-period ritual in which the temple distributed paper talismans (go-ō) to worshippers. As demand grew, talismans started getting torn apart in the rush, so the temple switched to wooden sticks — and then to throwing them into the crowd. Stripping down was practical: thick winter clothes get torn off in a press of bodies anyway, and fundoshi are durable, traditional, and visually unambiguous.

The cold isn’t a bug. Misogi — purification by cold water — is a core Shinto practice. The whole event is a giant communal misogi with stakes.

Where to see it

  • Saidai-ji Kannon-in, Okayama — third Saturday of February. The midnight scrum is the main event; arrive in the afternoon for the lead-up parades. Spectator viewing is from raised stands; book early.
  • Konomiya Hadaka Matsuri (Aichi) — held on lunar New Year’s 13th day. Older format, scapegoat-figure tradition.
  • Kokuseki-ji (Iwate) — held the seventh night of the lunar New Year. The 2024 edition was announced as the last after 1,000+ years, due to aging participants.

Closing

Friends who have done it describe the same thing twice: “You stop feeling cold after the first water dump, and then it’s just a wall of human steam.” Apparently spiritual cleansing has a temperature, and it’s somewhere around 4°C.

  • Flagship guide: Japan Winter Festivals — Sapporo Snow, Yokote Kamakura, and where the naked festivals fit on the calendar.