hachimaki<\/em>bandanas clash with each other as they attempt to transfer their bad luck to a \u201cchosen man\u201d by touching him before he is withdrawn to the safety of the shrine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ayaka Suzuki, who campaigned for the unofficial ban on women to be lifted, said she had wanted to take part in the festival since she was a child. \u201cI could have participated had I been a boy,\u201d she told reporters, according to the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suzuki added that she would use the opportunity to pray for her family\u2019s safety and for people affected by the recent deadly\u00a0earthquake\u00a0on the Noto peninsula.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Organisers of Japan\u2019s myriad festivals have come under pressure to open them up to all-comers amid concern that rural\u00a0depopulation\u00a0could put an end to events traditionally dominated by local men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This month, women took part in the Katsube fire festival in Shiga prefecture for the first time in its 800-year history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But organisers of the Somin-sai \u2013 which also features minimal clothing \u2013 in the north-east town of Oshu announced last month that the event would be held for the final time this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Daigo Fujinami, chief priest at the temple that hosts the 1,000-year old festival, told the Mainichi Shimbun that the decision had been prompted by the advanced ages of many local men and a lack of people to oversee the event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fujinami dismissed suggestions that the festival be opened up to people living outside the town, saying it would not be in keeping with \u201ccore rituals\u201d that had been handed down by generations of locals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While some have welcomed the revamped naked festival as a modest step forward for\u00a0gender equality, other areas of traditional life in Japan are still off limits to women, including the\u00a0dohyo<\/em>\u00a0ring used in the country\u2019s sport of sumo.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhile women\u00a0compete in amateur sumo, they cannot fight professionally and are banned from even stepping on to the dohyo \u2013 a dirt-covered circle marked out with half-buried rice-straw bales \u2013 used in the six main tournaments held every year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The rule has occasionally caused embarrassment to organisers of the centuries-old sport.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sumo authorities battled allegations of sexism in 2018 after several women, including a nurse, rushed on to a sumo ring to administer first aid to a local mayor who had collapsed after suffering a stroke. Using the public address system, the referee repeatedly ordered them to leave the ring, but the women refused.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Women in\u00a0Japan\u00a0have been permitted to take part in an ancient ceremony, known as the naked festival, for the first time in the event\u2019s history, albeit with modifications. Every February, thousands of men dressed in next to nothing take part in the\u00a0hadaka matsuri\u00a0at a Shinto shrine in Inazawa, a town in central\u00a0Japan, to drive away evil […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":41359,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[6850,11264,2459,8348,5777,9214,1279,7280,11700,5455,9127,12011,6159,2959,9326,5331,12309,8999,10963,7964,3230,8045,5324,5320,594],"class_list":["post-41358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-aid","tag-allegations","tag-ancient","tag-ban","tag-banned","tag-child","tag-circle","tag-earthquake","tag-evil","tag-family","tag-february","tag-festival","tag-fire","tag-japan","tag-japanese","tag-mayor","tag-men","tag-naked","tag-naked-festival","tag-north","tag-nurse","tag-rice","tag-stroke","tag-women","tag-who"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41358"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41360,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41358\/revisions\/41360"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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