F E S T I V A L ／ FEST-001

Hōkaiji Naked Dance (Shushōe Ceremony)

法界寺 裸踊り（修正会）ほうかいじ はだかおどり

At a small Buddhist temple in the southern hills of Kyōto, a ceremony has been conducted on the night of January 14th since the late Heian Period — a night-ritual of such intimacy and physical immediacy that it operates at a completely different register from the large-scale bizarre festivals that dominate Japan's international coverage. Hōkaiji (known locally as Hino Yakushi, the Yakushi Buddha of Hino) conducts the final night of the Shushōe, a January Buddhist purification rite, with a ceremony in which men clad only in fundoshi (loin cloths) link arms inside the main hall and circle the Yakushi Buddha, chanting "chōraku, chōraku" — "eternal joy, eternal joy" — while the crowd presses in close enough to feel the heat of their bodies. The scale is small, the crowd is dense, and the boundary between observer and participant collapses almost immediately. A children's round at 7:30 PM precedes the adult ceremony at 8:00 PM, and the adult round is significantly more intense. The same date as Shitennōji's Doya-doya means you must choose — but Hōkaiji offers something the larger ceremony cannot: physical proximity.