KAWASAKI, April 6 -- Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan's annual fertility festival teemed Sunday with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex.

The spring "Kanamara" celebration near Tokyo features colourfully dressed worshippers carrying a trio of giant phallic shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee.

The festival as legend has it honours a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman's vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights.

Today a three-foot (one-metre) black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of the Kanayama Shrine honouring the Shint...