S P O T ／ SPOT-001

Tagata Shrine (Phallus Shrine)

田縣神社たがたじんじゃ

If you've ever wondered whether a 2-meter, 60-kilogram wooden phallus could be the star of a major religious festival, Tagata Shrine has your answer. This unassuming Shinto shrine in Komaki City holds the Hōnen Festival every March — an annual celebration of fertility, bumper harvests, and human reproduction that has drawn BBC crews, CNN cameras, and tens of thousands of visitors who make the pilgrimage specifically to witness Japan's most globally famous bizarre ritual. The festival's centerpiece is a colossal carved phallus mikoshi — the divine portable shrine — that is paraded through the streets to thunderous cheers and delighted disbelief. But even outside festival season, Tagata's grounds are remarkable: votive offerings in every conceivable phallic shape crowd the shrine precincts, donated by supplicants praying for fertility, easy childbirth, and agricultural abundance. The tradition roots back to ancient Japanese folk religion, when the earth's creative power was openly celebrated in forms that later eras might euphemize but never entirely erased. The nearby Ōagata Shrine — dedicated to feminine fertility — sits a short drive away, making this one of Japan's great "yin and yang" shrine circuits, completable in a single morning. What reads as provocative to modern eyes was, for centuries, simply the honest language of a people who depended on the land and the continuation of their lineage.