The "Sominsai" festival, regarded as one of the strangest festivals that dates back 1,000 years in Japan, has come to an end due to an ageing population, saddening people all around the globe.
- Kokuseki Temple's Sominsai festival used to take place from the seventh day of the Lunar New Year through the following morning.
- The 1,000-year-old Japanese ceremony has come to an end as hundreds of nude men wrestled over a bundle of wooden talismans, raising a cloud of perspiration in the process for one last time on February 17.
- Their passionate chants of "jasso, joyasa" which means "evil, be gone" echoed through a cedar forest in northern Japan's Iwate region, where the secluded Kokuseki Temple is located and where the festival takes place.