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Hounen (means a rich harvest) Matsuri is an ancient ceremonial festival celebrating fertility and renewal that is held March 15 in Komaki, Japan.

This Hounen festival and ceremony celebrate the blessings of a bountiful harvest and all manner of prosperity and fertility and the all are welcome.

Months of organization and preparations are put into this major event. One of the many such preparations is the giant wooden phallus that is replaced every year.

A large cypress tree is brought to the shrine and purified during the coldest part of the winter. Then a master craftsman wearing traditional clothing and using traditional tools that have also been purified starts the process of shaping the new phallus.

This phallus will later become the central focus of the procession during the festival. After the festival it will be placed into the shrine.

The matsuri, known as the Hounen-sai, has always had the objective of ensuring a bountiful harvest. It is mostly a procession symbolizing the visit of the male Takeinadane to the powerful and waiting female Tamahime-no-mikoto. While not a matriarchal society, women held high social status in the Yamato period and after marriage were usually not required to join their spouse's household. The young warrior Takeinadane probably visited his wife instead of living together. These visits are symbolized in the procession.

Pre-procession rituals and blessings are performed

And lots of sake is offered up via carts and flows freely before and during the procession. Freely available to everyone.



Then the procession is started, lead by a priest that purifies the route followed by standard bearers and local dignitaries. Then traditionally women aged 36 (considered an unlucky age) carry wooden phalli because then their luck would be offset by the phalli and is considered an honor.



A group of Shinto priests goes next followed by two men carrying chests containing food offerings. Saki carts are also right in the procession handing out sake to the happy crowd as they go.

The first portable shrine (a mikoshi) comes into view, it is the shrine carrying the effigy of the visiting husband soon followed by the portable penis shrine which is carried by men aged 42 (considered an unlucky age) that trade out (it takes 60 to get the penis to it new home) as they tire out or just plain fall out from all the sake they have drank during the celebration or from the weight they are carrying. Probably a bit of both though.

At the end of the journey the new phallus is installed in it's new home until next year. What happens to the old ones you ask? Why they are sold to local businesses and private homes as they are blessed items.

To see how they end the celebrations check out Mochi Nage . I couldn't give away the ending now could I?

The phalli can be found just about everywhere in this community from nature to man-made items.



Just a side-note: The phalli is just a symbol and is not worshipped by these people. Rather

a worship of the earth, of the power that nature has through renewal and regeneration. It is this context that provides the phallus with its significance.

For most of the year the area is quiet where visitors come to the shrines to pray for successful conception, sometimes coming to give thanks for safe child birth and other personal reasons such as others would do in churches and any other places of worship. So do not make the mistake of thinking that these unique places and people are shameful or deranged in any way they have their own belief systems just as you have yours.

Next I might just write about the vagina shrines...

This interesting celebration and a more through look into it can be further researched by following the links below:
http://farstrider.net/Japan/Festivals/HounenMatsuri/index.htm
http://www.yamasa.org/japan/english/destinations/aichi/tagata_jinja.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hounen_Matsuri