Final 'Naked Men' festival held: The end of a tradition in Japan

The Somin-sai festival, or as it is more commonly known, the Naked Men Festival, has a 1,000-year history and is one of the oldest festivals in the country. This year, women were allowed to participate for the first time in the festival, where men typically attend wearing only white loincloths in the freezing cold of winter.

(Image taken from kokusekiji.jp)

The organizers of the festival, held at the Kokusekiji Temple, announced that it would not be held after this year. The reason given for ending the festival was 'the lack of young participants.'

The temple's head priest, Daigo Fujinami, stated that older participants were struggling with the rituals involved in the festival and that they could not find young participants physically capable of performing them.

Japan has one of the fastest-aging populations in the world. Since the 1980s, the country's population replacement rate has been 1.3. The replacement rate required for a country's population not to decline is 2.1. In Japan, the number of deaths has exceeded the number of births for a decade.

(Image taken from kokusekiji.jp)