MORIOKA--A festival believed to have a 1,000-year history will cease in February, bringing an end to men in loincloths fighting over a bag in the chill of Tohoku’s freezing winter. Kokusekiji ...

Japan’s biggest naked festival – a raucous, 500-year-old religious event in which some 10,000 men strip down to their loincloths and compete to catch twigs in the hope of having a lucky year ...