The annual Kanamara Penis Festival is one of the most famous and popular in Japan and seems to be attended by as many foreigners as Japanese. While you probably won't find it promoted in any of the official government tourist information, sightseers to take snaps of the phallic objects of worship as well as sample the penis-shaped sweets. Cool Japan indeed. Held every April in Kawasaki City, one of the highlights of the festival is a large pink phallic float apparently called Elizabeth. Last year this was only on a four-wheeled trolley and visitors were disappointed by its lack of ...

On April 7th the Kanamara Matsuri was held in Kawasaki, near to Tokyo, and one of the most popular of Japan's phallic fertility festivals. The highlight of the festival is the parade of the giant cock through the streets as it is processed between two shrines. This is stroked and touched by the crowds as it passes. This year saw the largest number of visitors ever, around 50,000 people and ten times more than the crowds were ten years ago. It is said to be now the largest festival of its kind in Japan. There were times when television channels would pixellate images of the ...

You can rely on the Japanese to celebrate what's best about the world. In Komaki, Aichi prefecture in central Japan, there exists the Honen Matsuri, a fertility festival held at Tagata Shrine in mid-March. A festival that asks for a good harvest, the highlight is certainly the massive phallus that processes around the shrine. Unfortunately, despite the multitude of gods in the Shinto universe, in fact the cock is not worshipped as a deity in its own right. Even more famous is the Kanamara festival at Kanayama shrine in Kawasaki, that features a massive pink cock and apparently grow ...

Kanamara Matsuri is a yearly festival in Kawasaki, Japan, where throngs of onlookers gather to cheer on a parade of giant phalluses. Legend has it that in the olden days, a sharp-toothed demon hid inside a Kawasaki girl's vagina, and a local blacksmith built an iron penis to break its teeth and free the young woman. The penis resides in the local temple most of the time, but one day a year, it is taken out and paraded around the town, its carriers shouting "deka mara!" (big penis). Shops line the streets of Kawasaki, selling the typical festival assortment of mochi, chicken skewers, and ...