The Hadaka Matsuri, or Naked Festival, was made famous by the massive midnight celebration in Saidai-ji, the largest in Japan. It features nearly 10,000 men and boys in loincloths grappling over the pair of sacred sticks. A bid to win good luck for the following year.

Around 500 years ago, worshipers of the shrine received paper charms from the priest at year’s end. It was believed good things happened to anyone who managed to get one, and the priests started getting more and more requests. These paper charms were eventually changed to something more substantial, and today, these are the pair of sacred wooden sticks and bundles of willow that are tossed into the crowd.

The ‘Naked Festival’ is a bit of a misnomer, since the competitors are neither naked nor celebrating fertility or other concepts the theme of ‘naked’ brings to mind. The traditional garb for the Hadaka Matsuri is the white loincloth. It adds to the challenge, since the festival is held at the end of the year when the weather is getting colder.

Saidai-ji’s ‘Hadaka Matsuri’ is the largest and most famous in all of Japan. Around 9,000 men participate in this festival, waiting for their chance to seize the lucky charms thrown into the crowd by the Shinto priest.

At exactly midnight, all the lights are shut off and a Shinto priest throws the 2 sticks into the crowd of partially-clad men waiting for their chance to seize them. No sooner has someone grabbed them than they are quickly snatched away. But eventually, one lucky man will stand the sticks into the box filled with rice known as the masu. He’s the lucky one, who will be blessed with good fortune for the following year.

XPets have intel that a demented Chinese Mandarin called Saiko (pronounced psycho) has plans to steal the sticks to give himself good fortune in his Fortune Cookie business, which is a front for smuggling shark fins and turtles for his string of international Chinese Restaurants.

He is hoping he can blend in with the Japanese contestants but XPets have been informed by a note received from a hostage sea turtle that Saiko will be wearing green headband. The headband has been squirted with invisible luminous ink by some of the captive sea turtles so that he stands out amongst the crowd of near naked Japanese men once the lights go out.

We should be able to find him and imprison him on Cat Island, where he will be kept for the rest of his life to tend to the cats.

Good luck dudes!

Remember all the answers to the quiz will be within this article so read it thoroughly for a good chance to win this month’s prize!

This is Nonny Mouse over and out!

Location

Okayama, Japan