KAWASAKI, Japan – Japanese revellers carried giant phalluses through the streets of Kawasaki on Sunday to worship the humble penis and fertility in one of the world’s most unusual festivals.

Size matters at the Shinto Kanamara Matsuri, where groups of locals parade three heavy phalluses around the city – the biggest as tall as a full-grown man.

Giggling festival-goers, including young children and grandmothers dressed in kimonos, sucked on penis lollipops and posed with phallus-shaped sculptures as political correctness was ignored for the day.

An anatomically correct radish-carving contest drew a large crowd of sniggering onlookers, while blushing parents perched babies on a giant see-saw of frighteningly accurate likeness to pray for fertility.

Tens of thousands gather every spring for the festival, where they can buy keepsakes such as key chains, trinkets, pens, chocolates and even toy glasses with a plastic penis nose.

For the local priest of the Kanayama Shrine, however, it is no laughing matter.

“If young children are not used to seeing (male genitalia), they could get into a bit of a panic when the time comes,” Hiroyuki Nakamura told AFP, explaining the festival’s educational role.

“People come to pray for good fortune and to ask the gods to protect them. The festival is steeped in the past but has still has a valuable part to play in modern society.”

Known as the Festival of the Steel Phallus – or colloquially as the “Willy Festival” – legend has it that in the Edo Period (1603-1868) a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina castrated several unfortunate young men on their wedding nights.

A local blacksmith came to the rescue by forging an iron dildo to break the demon’s teeth and today a three-foot (one-metre) black steel phallus sits in the shrine’s courtyard to honour the Shinto deities of fertility, childbirth and protection from sexually transmitted infections.

Over the centuries, sex workers also made a pilgrimage to the shrine to seek its powers of protection before the festival became a tourist attraction in the 1970s.

“I think it’s brilliant,” said Sayuri Kubo, a 14-year-old schoolgirl proudly holding an erotic lollipop. “The mikoshi (portable shrine) parade was awesome.” Three mikoshi are lugged through the streets of Kawasaki, including a giant pink phallus called Elizabeth, donated by a local drag queen club.

There is a serious side to the frivolity, despite the bizarre sight of normally reserved Japanese housewives posing for snapshots with oversized dildos.

Proceeds from sales of the saucy memorabilia go to HIV research while the shrine itself is visited year-round by married couples hoping to start a family.

“It’s about propagating the species,” nursery school teacher Natsuki Kanayama told AFP, holding lollipops in both hands with another poking out of her cleavage. “I’m praying that I can have as many children as possible.” Not surprisingly, however, the festival drew curious stares from visiting foreigners.

“It’s insane,” said American tourist Jason Bradley. “I’ve heard about ‘Cool Japan’ – I guess this is what they mean.”

BANGKOK – Thai authorities have confiscated nearly 6,000 red bowls bearing a message from an ousted ex-premier, a police officer said Sunday, in the junta’s latest attempt to block the resurgence of the political party it toppled.

The seizure followed the arrest last week of a woman seen posing with one of the bowls in photos on social media. She has been charged with sedition, a move described by a rights group as absurd.

The plastic scoops, used for pouring water in Buddhist ceremonies during Thailand’s upcoming new year, bear a note signed by former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, whose political bloc has spent the past decade vying for power with a military-backed elite.

Thaksin was ousted in a 2006 coup and now lives in exile, while the government run by his sister Yingluck was toppled by the current junta in 2014.

The bowls – in the Shinawatras’ signature red colour – were first distributed at a temple fair last week in the northern province of Chiang Mai.

The message printed on the side reads: “The situation may be hot, but brothers and sisters may gain coolness from the water inside this bucket.” On Saturday police and soldiers seized 5,800 of the water scoops from the home of a former MP from the Shinawatras’ Puea Thai Party in the northern province of Nan, according to a local police officer.

“If we allow these bowls to be distributed, it could benefit some political parties or result in losses to others,” officer Prayoon Chamnankong told AFP.

The woman arrested last week could be jailed for up to seven years if convicted of sedition. Rights groups slammed the charge as absurd.

“The Thai junta’s fears of a red plastic bowl show its intolerance of dissent has reached the point of absolute absurdity,” said Brad Adams, Human Rights Watch’s Asia director.

The junta has outlawed all political activities, pledging to heal the kingdom’s bitter divides.

But critics say the generals are chiefly bent on crippling the Shinawatra clan, who are wildly popular with their rural supporters in the north and east but hated by the Bangkok-centric military and royalist elite.

A similar attempt to quash the siblings’ enduring popularity was made earlier this year when authorities banned a calendar featuring the pair in an embrace.

After keeping quiet for much of the past two years, the family’s powerful political machine has recently become more vocal as the country gears up for the junta’s promised elections in 2017.

But public criticism of the regime has landed many Shinawatra allies in brief spells of military detention, which the army refers to as “attitude adjustment” sessions.