Japanese culture: I will never understand it.
What you're seeing is only a few of 9,000 men - yeah, all men - dressed only in skimpy white loincloths, trying to ward off bad luck by touching the body of the year's appointed "sacred man" as he enters Konomiya Shrine.
They crowd so fiercely that even though there is nothing but bodies and a few pieces of cloth, 2 men were badly injured in this year's event when they were crushed.
The ceremony is 1200 years old. No event so strange could last so long without some sort of deep religious/cultural significance. That's why I know I'm being terribly disrespectful when I say that two quarts of oil dumped into the middle might turn the whole thing into a gay orgy.
Oh dear, I'm very sorry I said it.