What’s inside?
A unique fertility festival
While most Pinoys celebrated Easter watching the processions of images of the Risen Christ, the Virgin Mary and the apostles around the Philippines, hundreds of thousands of Japanese and foreign tourists like me watched a different kind of procession at Kawasaki in the Kanagawa prefecture of Japan. A procession of Phallic symbols locally known as the Shinto Kanamara Matsuri or Festival of the Steel Phallus, which is held every first Sunday of April at the Kanayama Shrine in Kawasaki, Japan.
The festival is centered around the penis venerating Kanayama shrine, where people pray for a myriad of reasons. Childless couples pray for children; future brides and grooms pray for fertility and harmony; others pray for prosperity; pregnant women pray for easy delivery and even prostitutes pray they won’t contract venereal diseases. As of late, even the gay community prominently participates in the festivities. Most income derived from the festival is being funneled to HIV research. According to legend, a sharp-toothed demon (vagina dentata) hid inside the vagina of a young lady and bit off (ouch) the penis of her husband on their wedding night. To remedy her problem, the lady secured help from a blacksmith, who created an iron phallus to break the demon’s teeth, which led to the enshrinement of the item and is the main attraction of the yearly procession.
It was a cold rainy Easter Sunday morning when me and my compadre Hiro Oba, a former Kawasaki native who now resides in Manila, arrived in Kawasaki via three train transfers from Tokyo. Joey de Leon and his wife Eileen arrived in Kawasaki a day earlier from Osaka, where the Eat, Bulaga! stars and staff celebrated producer Tony Tuviera’s 70th birthday and marveled at the Sakura (Cherry blossoms) that bloom only for a very short period in late March/ early April of every year. Kawasaki is the ninth biggest Japanese city and where the Kanayama shrine is located. After leaving our luggage at the hotel posthaste, we joined Hiro’s lovely Pinay wife Marlyn and kids for the short train ride to the shrine. I was surprised that even a native like Hiro was ignorant of the festival. We hit the shrine a few minutes past 10 a.m. and the site was already bursting at the seams with people. Tourists and locals alike snapped pictures of everything in sight at the area, from the phallic-shaped candies and vegetables being sold by vendors all the way to the gigantic phalluses on display. My wife and the ladies in our group were shocked to see a Caucasian tourist walking naked waist down. At 10 minutes past 12 noon, the procession left the shrine and paraded around the district. I decided to join the parade for the experience. Fronting the parade were children colorfully garbed in various outfits, followed by a guy a
shinto priest holding and another guy who looked like the parade marshal walking slowly with wooden heels wearing a mask with a nose that resembled a penis.
There were three objects of veneration in the parade first of which was the black metallic phallus being carried by macho and virile men, then by a pink phallus being carried by an all-gay ensemble garbed in multi-colored wigs and kimonos which I gamely joined and last was a wooden phallus that looked ancient. After the procession made its rounds, it returned to the shrine for festivities that lasted late into the night. On the flight back to Manila, the purser on the PAL PR427, who is a long-time friend, asked me what I did in Tokyo. I was afraid to say what I attended and just showed him pictures of the festival to which he responded with shock.