Each spring, as cherry blossoms begin their brief, spectacular bloom across Japan, another kind of flowering takes place in towns and villages throughout the archipelago. It is less delicate, considerably more robust, and utterly unashamed: the season of fertility festivals, where wooden phalluses are hoisted skyward, carried through streets and celebrated with a joy that would make a Puritan blush. A country where a carved penis is paraded through public markets forbids the showing of genitals in pornographic films. If Iceland can have a Penis Museum, a Penis Festival makes sense.
Illustration by GAY45In Japan, a country where ancient ritual and modern sensibility often coexist in peculiar harmony, the sacred and the bawdy frequently intertwine. Nowhere is this more vivid than in its fertility festivals—joyful, unabashed celebrations centred around the phallus, agricultural abundance, and human vitality. Across the archipelago, springtime and the new year usher in a host of carnivalesque events where penis-shaped icons are paraded, worshipped, and playfully consumed.
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You can simply scroll past — but please don’t overlook the importance of an independent queer press.
You can simply scroll past—but please don't overlook the importance of an independent queer press.
Time is now or never.
Queer voices disappear without independent journalism to amplify them.
We document what others won't touch.
We hold power to account when it threatens our communities.
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Donate over €25/month and receive our limited-edition tote bag — a badge of resistance, a statement that you stand for fearless journalism.
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These festivals—known collectively as fertility matsuri—represent one of Japan’s most enduring contradictions. In a society often perceived as reserved, even prudish, these celebrations embrace the ribald with an enthusiasm that borders on the ecstatic. They are, in their own way, profoundly Japanese: ancient rituals dressed in modern pageantry, sacred ceremonies that never quite forget to wink.
The most famous of these is Kawasaki’s Kanamara Matsuri, the Festival of the Iron Phallus, held each April. Its origin story reads like a fairytale penned by the Brothers Grimm after a particularly rowdy night: a demon, jealous and sharp-toothed, takes residence in a woman’s vagina, severing her lovers’ manhood until a clever blacksmith forges an iron phallus to break the curse. Today, the festival draws thousands who come to witness enormous phallic floats—including a towering pink specimen donated by a local drag troupe—paraded through the streets. Daikon radishes are carved into suggestive shapes, sweets moulded to anatomical precision, and prayers are offered for fertility, safe childbirth, and protection from sexually transmitted diseases. The festival now raises funds for HIV research, transforming ancient rituals into contemporary activism.
The spiritual underpinnings run deeper than mere spectacle. These festivals emerged from Shinto beliefs that view fertility as sacred, essential to both agricultural abundance and human continuity. In Aichi Prefecture, the Honen Matsuri features a 280-kilogram wooden phallus, freshly carved each year from Japanese cypress and ceremonially spun to ensure a good rice harvest. The ritual connects human fertility to the earth’s fecundity in ways that predate Christianity by centuries.
At Niigata’s Hodare Festival, newlywed women in traditional kimono may ride atop massive wooden phalluses carried by chanting men—a practice believed to bless marriages with healthy children. The ceremony unfolds with surprising dignity despite its obvious subject matter, participants treating the ritual with the same reverence they might show at a tea ceremony.
Not all such rites take place in spring. Tenteko Matsuri, held each January in Aichi, features six men dressed in vivid red—the “unlucky” ones chosen to ritually invite prosperity. As they drum and thrust rhythmically down the streets, daikon penises swing at their backs, a comical but deliberate invocation of fertility. Ash thrown into the crowd is considered a blessing; mochi rains from the sky like a divine snack.
Lastly, the Dontsuku Festival in Shizuoka, once thought permanently cancelled, triumphantly returned in 2023. Its hallmark: a massive wooden phallus carried through the town while volunteers wield “wang-wands” to bestow luck. Surrounded by penis-shaped sausages and cheeky merchandise, it offers one of Japan’s most jubilant affirmations of life itself.
These festivals persist as living theology. They represent a worldview that sees the body as a divine creation rather than a shameful vessel, sexuality as a sacred force rather than a necessary evil. In their gleeful embrace of the corporeal, they offer something increasingly rare in our sanitised age: the celebration of human desire as both natural and holy.
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