I was worried there for a while I wasn’t going to have any Trashed Ideas this week. I knew of a few I could throw down, but I like having fresh material and these things have a tendency to fall in my lap. This weeks Trashed Idea is a manly one.
The Kanamara Matsuri is a Shinto fertility festival that largely revolves around the male penis.
The Kanamara Matsuri is centered around a local penis-venerating shrine once popular among prostitutes who wished to pray for protection against sexually transmitted diseases. It is said that there are divine protections also in business prosperity and the clan’s prosperity, easy delivery, marriage, and married couple harmony. There is also a legend of a sharp-toothed demon that hid inside the vagina of a young girl and castrated two young men on their wedding nights with the young girl before a blacksmith fashioned an iron phallus to break the demon’s teeth, leading to the enshrinement of the item.
In recent years, the group that runs this shindig has started to take donations to cures for HIV. And that’s your Trashed Idea for the week.