Sex festivals

annual festival in Kawasaki, Japan

thumb|Hōnensai

annual BDSM and leather subculture street fair in San Francisco, California, USA

Shinto shrine in Aichi Prefecture, Japan

thumb|400px|Scene on a third-century A.D. sarcophagus depicting an [[orgia]]

Utagaki (歌垣), also read kagai (嬥歌), was an ancient Japanese Shinto ritual gathering. Villagers would meet on a mountaintop, where singing, dancing, eating, having free sexual intercourse and the reciting of poetry would occur, in celebration of the beginning of spring or autumn. These events were closely associated with harvest rites, and therefore fertility.