The first Japanese saw that all animate life was created by the sexual union of the male and female. They incorporated this reality into their indigenous religion, which eventually came to be known as Shinto, or “The Way of the Gods.”
The core of Shintoism is the relationship that exists between tangible life and the unseen forces that affect and control nature, usually represented by gods. The practice of Shintoism is aimed at maintaining a harmonious relationship between life and the gods.
Since constant re-creation is essential to have an ongoing world, fertility—the ability to reproduce—was therefore the heart of Shintoism. In simplistic terms, Shintoism was sex worship, cloaked, of course, in the guise of crop festivals and ancestor worship.
On the human side, one of the most conspicuous symbols of fertility is the erect male organ. Until very recent decades there were hundreds of thousands of replicas of the male organ, carved in stone or wood, lining the roadways and byways of Japan as daily reminders of the importance of sexual union in the survival of mankind.
Some of these penile carvings were huge in size, suggesting (to me, at least) that there was a strong element of pleasure as well as humor in the practice of Shintoism.
Until the latter decades of the 20th century these roadside reminders of human sexuality were still fairly common in the countryside, and I had a lot of fun calling attention to them when I was in the company of young women. I will always regret that I didn’t make a collection of them to later position around my backyard.
Use of the male organ as both the symbol of human fecundity and as a talisman for women wanting to become pregnant has not died out in Japan. Far from it. There are still a number of Shinto shrines around the country that have annual festivals featuring authentic-looking replicas of male penises as links to the god of fertility.
These festivals consist of huge wooden carvings of the male organ, some of them appropriately colored for authenticity, being carried through the streets on wheeled vehicles to be admired by the crowds that gather for the occasions. Wives wanting to become pregnant may stroke the penises as they pass by. At the shrines sponsoring the festivals, purse-sized replicas of penises are sold by priests to women who want to carry them around in the hope that some of the power of the talisman will rub off on them.
Interestingly enough, men today, and especially foreign men, are more likely than women to be embarrassed by the extraordinary spectacle of a 20-foot-long penis being pulled through the streets while cheering crowds line the sidewalks.
Of course, part of this uneasiness may be sheer intimidation, since the impression made by a log-sized long phallus is a pretty hard act to follow.
Be that as it may, the legacy that Shintoism bequeathed to Japan played a central role in the overall sexual attitudes and practices shaping the traditional culture of the country, and set the stage for what an unenlightened Western visitor in the 1600s described as “an orgy of licentious behavior from one end of the country to the other.”