Hasu Transitoire (The Transient Lotus)

On February 7 each year, local men in Owase, a small city in Mie prefecture sandwiched by mountains and ocean, perform an *interesting* ritual to ensure good weather and abundant crops in the year ahead. First, the men first carve giant phalluses and model farming tools from local cedar and bamboo. Second, they stuff their pockets with stonefish (okoze), an unsightly and highly venomous creature. Proceeding to a small  worship hall in a grove of cinnamon trees, they offer the wooden implements and sake to the mountain goddess while laughing boisterously and mocking the hideous fish. "BAHAAHAHAHAHAHA," the men roar. "This is no fish at all!" According to local lore, when the sea god and the mountain god competed to see who could collect more "fruits" in their respective realms, the sea god emerged victorious thanks to the help of stonefish. The losing mountain god, a jealous female deity who detests "real" women, must therefore be specially

On the night of February 6 each year, upwards of 2,000 men brave the cold of winter to perform the Otō Matsuri, a wild rite of purification and renewal—by fire—designed to supplicate the mountain god(s) and pave the way for an auspicious year. In principle, the men have followed a strict code of abstinence for a week leading up to the event: performing daily water ablutions and bathing (naked) in the ocean; consuming only white-colored foods such as tofu, polished rice, and white fish cakes; and swearing off all contact with women. Today, the purification protocol extends for some only to the day of the event. Their minds and bodies pure, the “nobori-ko” (lit. “ascending children”), as they are called, don white clothing (robe, hood, headband), wrap straw ropes around their chest (7, 5, or 3 times, depending), and strap on straw sandals. Completing the get-up is a hand-held torch made of cypress wood, carved in the shape of a five-sided pyramid and stuffed with wood shavings. The

February 16 in Ōno City of north Fukui prefecture means its time for “Isekō,” a radish-eating extravaganza for men with an alleged 300-year-old history. Ōno City is a modern municipality of just over 30,000 residents (and steadily declining), a postwar merger of the Edo-period castle town of Ōno and a handful of nearby villages. Lining Ōno’s northeastern horizon line are the frosted peaks of Mt. Haku (lit. “White Mountains”), a National Park reputed as one of Japan “Three Great Sacred Mountains” (alongside Mt. Fuji to the southeast and Mt. Tateyama further northeast). A ring of mountains wraps all around the city, in fact, and the region was not easily accessible until mountain tunnels were blasted in the 20th century. A beautifully scenic and rather isolated place, to say the least. In the city’s Tsuchifugo ward (once an independent hamlet), at the confluence of three rivers (Kuzuryū, Mana, Akane), local men gather on this day to munch on “logs” of miso-simmered radish. This is