Global Ilk Magazine Issue #3 || Kanamara Matsuri | Page 18

Kanamara Matsuri is an event for
all types of people. The curious, the
"naughty",the coy, voyeur and exposed.
Come one, come all. Japan is home to a
multi-billion dollar porn industry and to act
as if this festival is not intertwined would
be reckless. Regardless of the historical
intentions of this festival it has sprouted
into a spectacle more so, for international
visitors than the Japanese. Once past
the ironic humor of it all, this festival
does speak to the differences in Eastern
and Western culture and how they view
sexuality. The Japanese view of sexuality
has traditionally teetered across a wide
spectrum of heterosexual, homosexual and
transgender sexual acts with tremendous
acceptance of fetishes and paraphilia.
If you need convincing simply refer to
Hisayasu Satô’s Naked Blood. A film
with it's most well known scene in which
a woman, ever so delicately, slices off
a meaty chunk of her own labia with a
knife and fork before devouring it with
obvious pleasure. From the beginning,
pornographic woodblock photographs were
made and sold hosting descriptive images
of anything imaginable, from sexual
acts involving incest, Gods, animals.
Pornography was a cultural expression
and catalyst for Japan's sociopolitical
revolution.

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Japan near required that the
submission of individual bodies be for
the greater good, in procreating, keeping
traditional gender roles., marriage etc.
took from individual desire and therefore
sexual expression. creating an industry
free for exploration regardless of absurdity,
at times self-destructive sexuality that is
found in Japanese culture. The intense
fetishes and erotic tendencies have been
compared to that of the the Modern Art
movement in the West. In the 20th century
Japan had an artistic movement called
"Ero Guro Nansensu" or "Ero Guro",
literally "erotic-grotesque-nonsense" was
a literary and artistic movement of erotica,
decadence, sexual corruption and things
of the like. The movement itself was
devoted to exploring the bizarre, deviant
and ridiculous. While the depth of the
history of the Japanese adult film industry
is interwoven in mostly fact and some
speculation what remains as fact is that
it's history spans centuries and is a part of
the Japanese culture. What can be learned
is that porn, sexuality and exploration is
accepted as common. This festival was
simply an extension of this mindset.
What is curious from all of this is that a
massive number of Japanese youths have
reported that they have little interest in sex.
Specifically males.