A traditional festival dating back more than 300 years, in which participants pray for a bountiful harvest by eating large servings of burdock from a vermilion bowl, was held Tuesday in Echizen, Fukui Prefecture, in central Japan.Around 20 men dressed in traditional Japanese haori coats and hakama trousers gathered at a private home to celebrate the Soden Shogatsu Jushichinichi-ko Festival, sustaining a custom passed down since the Edo Era, which dates from 1603 to 1868.A key feature of the festival is that all participants are male, and the event is characterized by the eating of heaping p…READ FULL ARTICLE
