Festival

Festival of the Steel Phallus

author: serlingrod : Kawasaki, Japan
Sunday, May 6th, 2007

Cultural Calgary... Fringe Festival

author: Sherlock77 : Calgary, AB
Saturday, August 26th, 2006

Pitchfork Festival

author: ghostofgrandin : Chicago, IL
Wednesday, August 2nd, 2006

Sun & Salsa

author: ksedge : Calgary, AB
Tuesday, July 25th, 2006

Kensington Market Festival of Lights 2005

author: Drew (drewk at 1k dot ca) : Toronto, ON
Friday, January 27th, 2006

La Fête Des Thermopyles

author: alice : Paris, France
Thursday, November 24th, 2005

Cajun Music Festival

author: ian : Angleton, TX
Thursday, August 4th, 2005

Springfields: Mayday

author: Jamie : Spalding, UK
Sunday, May 1st, 2005

May 20, 2007. Lantern Festival for Buddha

author: Chiamattt : Seoul, South Korea

Festival of the Steel Phallus

author: serlingrod : Kawasaki, Japan

The Kanamara Matsuri, also called Festival of the Steel Phallus, is an annual Shinto fertility festival held in Kawasaki, Japan each spring. The festival is centered around a local penis-venerating shrine, once popular among prostitutes who wished to pray for protection against sexually transmitted diseases. Today, the festival is used to raise money for HIV research. There's also a legend of a demon that hid inside a young girl and castrated two young men on their wedding nights before a blacksmith fashioned an iron phallus that was used to break the demon's teeth, leading to the enshrinement of the item.

External Links

Festival photos on flickr
Festival posts on technorati