Making a Sacred Splash
Club Governor Michael Benner heads to Chiba each September for two colorful days of semi-naked ritual.
Every year, Michael Benner strips to the waist and surges neck-deep into the heaving waves of the Pacific Ocean, hefting a god high above his shoulders.
This month, for the ninth time in as many years, the Club Member will participate in the Ohara Naked Festival in his adopted hometown of Iwafune, Chiba Prefecture. Benner lived in the seaside hamlet for four years and still maintains a home there for surfing and diving for abalone.
“One of the elders of the village said, ‘Look, if you want to get accepted into this village, you’ve got to be in the festival,’” recalls Benner, 51. “We realized quite quickly that we had to dive right in.”
Similar Shinto-based, male-only “naked festivals” (a misnomer, since nobody is completely nude) are held throughout Japan. The centuries-old Ohara festival is staged to assure a bountiful fishing season, with many former residents returning for the festivities. Benner takes part with his two young sons.
Like “Christmas, New Year’s and your birthday all tied into one” is how Benner describes the two-day event. Men from 18 villages carry mikoshi portable shrines across the greater town of Ohara, culminating with a purification ritual in the ocean.
The festival kicks off at 4:30am with offerings at a hilltop shrine to 75 gods, who, according to local myth, emerged from the sea at a point near Benner’s home. A deity is then invited into the mikoshi.
Iwafune’s 50 to 60 shrine bearers, dressed in white leggings and a purple sash, carry the mikoshi from shrine to shrine. One year, Benner hosted the shrine at his house, where he plied his fellow participants with four cases of Budweiser and grilled bratwursts.
The caravan of mikoshi are welcomed by thousands of spectators at the Ohara wharf in the afternoon. All 18 crews race around the fish market before carrying their ornately decorated palanquins into the ocean.
“The waves are just pounding around us,” says Benner. “The omikoshi meet each other [in the water] and there are various songs. It’s all very ritualized.”
After parading through the Ohara shopping streets, the day ends with a race around the local elementary school grounds, with lanterns from all 18 mikoshi bouncing like giant fireflies.
“I normally switch in with one of the three positions in the back,” says Benner. “You just kind of slap the guy on the back, he jumps off and you jump on as quickly as you can. …It’s this incredible adrenaline rush.”
The festivities, minus the ocean ritual, are replayed on the second day, with the party stretching into the wee hours. Benner says he treks up to 35 kilometers during the festival, and carrying the mikoshi feels like hoisting a weight-lifting set.
“Japan is unique in the sense that there are no festivals that are just pure pleasure,” he says. “There’s this interesting kind of societal significance of sharing in this hardship together in order to make the society a little stronger.”
Words: Nick Narigon
The Ohara Naked Festival is held September 23 to 24.
