PHILIP FONG-AFP
Hundreds of naked men tussled over a bag of wooden talismans, performing a dramatic end to a thousand-year-old ritual in Japan that took place for the last time.
Their passionate chants of "jasso, joyasa" (meaning "evil, be gone") echoed through a cedar forest in northern Japan's Iwate region, where the secluded Kokuseki Temple has decided to end the popular annual rite.
Organising the event, which draws hundreds of participants and thousands of tourists every year, has become a heavy burden for the ageing local faithful, who find it hard to keep up with the rigours of the ritual.
The "Sominsai" festival, regarded as one of the strangest festivals in Japan, is the latest tradition impacted by the country's ageing population crisis that has hit rural communities hard.
The temple opened in 729.
Japan's society has aged more rapidly than most other countries. The trend has forced countless schools, shops and services to close, particularly in small or rural communities.
Kokuseki Temple's Sominsai festival used to take place from the seventh day of the Lunar New Year through to the following morning.
But during the Covid pandemic, it was scaled down to prayer ceremonies and smaller rituals.
The final festival was a shortened version, ending around 11:00 pm, but local residents said it drew the biggest crowd in recent memory.
As the sun set, men in white loincloths came to the mountain temple, bathed in a creek and marched around the temple's ground.
They clenched their fists against the chill of a winter breeze, all the while chanting "jasso, joyasa".
Some held small cameras to record their experience, while dozens of television crews followed the men through the temple's stone steps and dirt pathways.
As the festival climaxed, hundreds of men packed inside the wooden temple shouting, chanting and aggressively jostling over a bag of talismans.
Toshiaki Kikuchi, a resident who claimed the talismans and who helped organise the festival for years, said he hoped the ritual would return in the future.
Many participants and visitors voiced sadness and understanding about the festival's ending.
