The Somin-sai Festival, better known as the "Festival of Naked Men" in Oshu, is famous and notorious as it is considered one of the wildest events in Japan.

Countless men jostle against each other, clad only in a thong-like loincloth and thin socks, and this happens at night in winter temperatures.

The goal of the spectacle at the Kokusekiji Temple: They want to grab a hemp bag filled with good luck charms in the belief that this will protect them from misfortune and calamity. The folk festival in the northeastern Iwate Prefecture has a 1,000-year-old history – but this has now come to an end. The reason for this is a lack of new generations, as the shrine explains: The participants have aged, and the tradition can no longer be continued.

As a result, one of the most bizarre and peculiar folk festivals in Japan is a victim of the rapid aging of the country. No other industrialized nation ages as quickly as Japan.

And so in the year 2024, for the very last time, the hordes of nearly naked men gathered in icy cold in the temple, first to cleanse themselves in a river and then to go to a hall of the sanctuary, where they prayed for a good harvest and other blessings, before then wrestling for a hemp sack that contained that very little good luck charm. The Somin-sai festival was one of the three most important Hadaka Matsuri in the country - the festivals of naked men.

This includes, on one side, the Saidaiji Eyo at the Saidaiji Kannonin Temple in Okayama Prefecture, which is 700 kilometers away from Tokyo. There are also two other festivals where "naked men" play the main role: In one, they compete for wooden poles that are also said to bring good luck, while in the other, the scantily clad men carry large bamboo poles and wait for the appearance of the divine man, known as the Shin-otoko.