On the third Saturday of February, thousands of men in loincloths pack the great hall of Saidaiji Kannon-in temple in Okayama, and at midnight the lights go out. Into the darkness, priests hurl the shingi — sacred wands of wood — and the hall becomes a single struggling body, steam rising off it into the winter night. Whoever carries a shingi out is that year's fuku-otoko, the man of fortune. The Saidaiji Eyo, counted among Japan's great 'naked festivals,' has run for more than five hundred years, and it retains a rawness that no amount of fame has smoothed away. Local companies and neighborhood associations enter as teams, training for weeks beforehand; on festival night the bathhouses of Saidaiji overflow. Before the scramble, the men purify themselves in cold water; their chanting rolls across the Okayama plain for hours, low and hypnotic, until the temple is at capacity and the air inside is as warm as summer. Outside, food stalls steam in the cold and families wait for news. Fortune, the night suggests, is not given but taken — and once a year, in this one place, taking it is somehow a communal act rather than a selfish one.