Giant Penises of the Frozen North
Comments: 6
So I’m testing the latest Epson scanner driver on some old photographs I printed years ago and I found this one which I can’t resist showing you. This is going to skyrocket me to the top of Google’s results for “big dicks” no doubt about it.
This was taken in the far north of Honshu at a hot spring called Kuro-yu (Black Bath), one of the most beautiful springs I’ve ever seen. These giant wooden penises are good luck and fertiility symbols, stuck in the middle of a river of sulphur that bubbles up from the ground. People have placed coins in the cracks of the wood to vouchsafe their prayers.
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Posted to Oh, the Humanity • 2002.11.29 (Fri) • 14:10
Comments
Posted by Mary Beth 2002.11.29, 14:37
um. How big are these? Inquiring minds…..
Posted by jh 2002.11.29, 14:58
LOL!
OK, the largest one in the middle of the frame there is about 3 and a half feet tall.
Speaking of giant wooden penises, there’s a festival at a temple in Kanagawa south of Tokyo each April which is devoted to fertility. Young ladies are carried around the temple grounds astride members several metres in length. I’ve never been to it, but apparently it’s a scream. Plenty of classic photo opportunities I bet!
Posted by tom 2002.11.29, 16:36
that is some funny shit man, great find.
Posted by Brandon 2002.11.29, 17:32
sorta reminds me of the easter island statues…only more perverted
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens 2002.11.29, 22:52
Why perverted?
Posted by jh 2002.11.30, 00:19
If “perverted” means more sexual in nature, then sure, I suppose so. But the Japanese are traditionally not prudish about sex at all (public bathing used to be mixed until Westerners arrived here and started kicking up grand old Victorian tight-arsed fuss).
You need to understand that there’s nothing licentious about these particular woodies (sorry — couldn’t resist).
On Sado Island I found a temple entirely filled with little penis and vagina statues, hundreds and hundreds of them. They were so cute. Look at the statue from one side and you saw the male part, turn it around and you saw the female. I was travelling without a camera for some infuriating reason. These statues aren’t so rare (but that a temple would be completely given over to them was unusual). It’s that old yin/yang thing, two sides of the same being, the sweet mystery of life. The Japanese embraced this realisation in all its manifestations, from cosmic sigh to worldly panting, and knew that nothing this essential could ever be embarrassing.
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