One of the traditional events during the August O-Bon season in Japan is bon odori, or bon dancing. Women, usually middle-aged and elderly, dance on platforms erected in the middle of the street or on open lots. People of all ages do it during parades down the streets, often in groups from their place of employment—bank employees, school teachers, department store clerks…

It’s pleasant to watch, albeit rather tame. It involves waving your arms in the air, swaying to and fro, and following a pattern of steps. No shaking of hips or smacking of lips. All perfectly respectable.

But this article from the Daily Mainichi’s WaiWai, passing on information from the monthly magazine Cyzo, says that ain’t how it used to be in the old days. In a reverse of the usual trend, the now domesticated bon odori used to be a much wilder affair. So wild, in fact, that it was banned for indecent behavior.

I had to read more about this—with a strict scientific detachment for my matsuri studies, of course—and headed to the bookstore last month to get a copy of Cyzo, but they were sold out. Drat!

So I checked out some Japanese language sources on the Web and was surprised to discover there wasn’t a lot of information available on line about dirty O-Bon dancing. I did discover that there was a common perception a century or so ago that bon odori was synonymous with an orgy. Apparently, it was banned several times by the authorities, starting in the Edo Period, even earlier than the Cyzo article suggests, and not because foreigners were shocked.

It seems that the lewd bon odori was not a problem in the cities, but rather in the rural areas. Young people living out in the country had a hard time of it living on the land. They were usually poor and had few opportunities for socializing. In fact, early in Japanese history, there was the custom of tsumadoi in which women continued to live with their family after marriage. Their husbands paid them occasional conjugal visits. The women didn’t leave the household because their labor was needed on the farm.

New Year’s and summer festivals were one of the few opportunities for young men and women living in the sticks to get to meet each other, and the weather at New Year’s is not conducive to outdoor fun. People didn’t let their chance for summertime socializing go to waste, so bon odori in those days was just a quick prelude to finding a dark spot in the bushes.

This didn’t happen in the cities because people had more opportunities to mingle with the opposite sex. In fact, the custom of bon odori had died out entirely in the urban areas.

The WaiWai article notes that some of these customs have been handed down to modern times in different festivals. One of these festivals is the Shineri Benten Tataki Jizo in Niigata Prefecture’s Uonuma. During this festival, a special area is set up in which any woman who enters is liable to be pinched, and any man who pinches a woman is likely to be whacked on the shoulders.

This sounds like it could be so much fun that I just had to find out more.

Ah, so. I should have known. It turns out that the word shineri is derived from a combination of the words shiri, which are the buttocks, and tsuneru, which means to pinch. Tradition has it that the women who get pinched and the men who get whacked will have good fortune for the coming year. By all accounts, things get a bit rambunctious the night of the festival. I’ll bet.

Of course I scouted around for some photos, and I found some, too. I’ve posted one here—once again with a strict scientific detachment for the study of matsuri, of course. The children are sitting astride a shinten, which is the object at a Shinto shrine or festival in which the spirit of the divinity dwells. They dance around it during the festival. Why, did you think it was supposed to represent something else?

Now doesn’t this religious ceremony seem to be a more pleasant way to spend a summer evening with your children than going to a church supper?