Every year in Japan's Sominsai "Naked Man" winter festival at the Kokusekiji Temple, a bunch of guys from all over the country show up, don loin cloths, carry lanterns that say "Jasso joyasa!" (evil, go away), bathe in freezing water, and then wrestle each other for possession of a sacred talisman.
This crazy display of manhood has been going on every year for 1,000 years.
But 2024 marks the final year of the Sominsai at Kokusekiji.
The festival has been shrinking every year (and I'm not talking about what happens in the freezing cold water).
In an online post, organizers of the festival conceded they had been unable to find enough willing young participants to alleviate the pressures placed on aging locals who are unable to keep up with the demands of the ritual.
"This decision is due to the aging of individuals involved in the festival and a shortage of successors," Daigo Fujinami, Chief Priest of the Kokusekiji Temple, wrote on the shrine's website.
The shortage is the same one plaguing all of Japan and the western world:
Population decline.
Japan's birth rate is a sad 1.3, well below the 2.1 replacement rate. The nation has had a decade of deaths out-numbering births.
It is predicted that in just eight years' time, the number of women of childbearing age will fall to a point where Japan's population decline becomes irreversible, and it seems unlikely that the Japanese government will be able to create the required complex cultural change within that time span.
There are some globalists that are cheering that outcome even if it means financial collapse.
Who knew the loss of naked guys doing a polar plunge and wrestling would be such a bellwether for social decline?
It‘s hard to imagine what else the world will lose on its current anti-human trajectory.
P.S. Now check out our latest video 👇
