Wednesday, April 4, 2018

Kanamara Matsuri

OK. So while some of us were celebrating Easter last Sunday, the city of Kawasaki, just west of Tokyo, was celebrating the Festival of the Steel Phallus. So named because a young woman rejected a demon who in revenge took up residence in her vagina and bit any penis that ventured in, until the resourceful heroine contracted with a blacksmith to forge a steel dildo on which the demon broke his teeth and fled. I’m not making this up. But if it didn’t exist, I’d have to. The current festival only goes back to 1969. It’s happy-making to know that when you need a tradition, you can always invent one.






2 comments: