For 1,250 years, Japan’s ‘naked man’ festival barred women - until now - but they can’t go ‘Full Monty’

However, women will still not be allowed to participate in the crescendo of the festival that it is most famous for – a rough-and-tumble scrum in which men wearing only loincloths attempt to touch a completely naked man designated as the shin-otoko, or “god man” in Japanese, to gain good fortune for the next year.

The traditionally men-only Hadaka Matsuri festival is scheduled to take place throughout the day on February 22, with Mitsugu Katayama, an official of the organising committee, telling This Week in Asia that around 10,000 local people are expected to take part in the festival while a similar number will be spectators.

“We have not been able to hold the festival like we used to for the past three years because of the pandemic and, in the time, we received a lot of requests from women in the town to take part,” he said.

He claimed that women were not actively banned from taking part in every element of the day’s festivities but that no groups of local women had wanted to be involved previously. Around 40 women have banded together to take part in the coming ritual offering of bamboo at the shrine.

Ayaka Suzuki, one of the women who will be taking part in the event for the first time, said at a press conference at the shrine on Saturday that she has long wanted to be involved.

The resident of Inazawa said she had wanted to be a part of the most important day in the town’s calendar since she was a little girl, adding, “I could have participated if I were a boy,” the Yomiuri newspaper reported.

Suzuki is vice chair of the group that has been demanding that women be allowed to take part in the festival, saying that she intends to use her role in the event to “pray for the safety of my family and the people affected by the