EIt's one of Japan's wildest festivals: at the famous Somin-sai festival, hordes of men, all wearing nothing more than thong-shaped loincloths and thin socks, battle fiercely against the wintry weather at night. They want to get hold of a bag of hemp with lucky charms, believing it will protect them from harm. The spectacle at Kokusekiji Temple in northeastern Iwate Prefecture has a 1,000-year history, but has now ended.

Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun reported that the shrine decided to stop the festival because the participants were aging and there were no heirs to continue the tradition. This means that one of Japan's weirdest folk festivals is falling victim to rapid obsolescence. No other industrialized country is aging as fast as Japan.

And so this year, hordes of almost naked men gathered in the temple for the last time in the freezing cold. They first cleaned themselves in the river and then went to a shrine hall where they prayed for a good harvest and other blessings before wrestling over a small bag of hemp containing a lucky charm, the newspaper reported.

The Somin-sai festival was one of the three most important “Hadaka Matsuri” – a festival of naked men in the island nation. It also includes Saidaiji Eyo at Saidaiji Kannonin Temple in Okayama Prefecture, 700 kilometers from Tokyo. There, too, 10,000 men in loincloths and thin socks scramble at night in winter weather to get hold of two wooden sticks, believing that they will bring good luck for the year.