Is he a drunken master or just drunk again?

The warm weather of spring in Japan is creeping back and with it so to do the exhibitionists. This time early birds in Gifu City were confronted with the sight of a 56-year-old man walking through the streets wearing nothing but a stern expression on his face.

At about 5:40 a.m. Gifu police received several reports of a naked man walking around and wasted no time picking him up. Luckily, he was easy to spot.

However, the story took a strange twist when the man, who was undeniably naked, still denied the charges against him. He told police, “My intention wasn’t to be obscene. I was doing it for training.”

It should be noted that the exact word he used was “shugyo” which refers to a more punishing type of spiritual training designed to harmonize one’s mind and body and get closer to enlightenment. A common example of shugyo is meditating under a waterfall, or pretty much every kung fu movie has a shugyo sequence where the master abusively trains his disciple into a lean, mean, fighting machine.

▼ Here we see Jackie Chan undergo shugyo so that he can win the big countywide egg-and-spoon relay race

Readers were largely divided on the suspect being either an aspiring warrior monk or just your run-of-the-mill old naked guy.

“Ah the first pervert of spring has arrived!”
“That’s some training.”
“I wonder if he thought he was making people cross over to the other side of the road with the power of his mind.”
“Actually, walking naked as a form of shugyo isn’t unheard of… He could be legit.”
“This is religious persecution!”
“Maybe getting arrested is all part of the training.”
“It’s hard to cleanse your spirit in such a toxic world…”
“If you want to train like that, fine. Just stay the hell away from me.”
“There was a time when nudity was a part of shugyo… It was a crime then too though.”
“I think he meant he was a Pokémon trainer.”

This shouldn’t be too tough of a case to crack for prosecutors. All they need to do to establish intent is grill the guy on whatever school of physical and spiritual perfection he is attempting to follow, and if he passes, then maybe he is just another Bruce Lee in training.

If not, just chalk it up to yet another man yearning to be free and be seen. It does little for the maintenance of public order, but at least we can be continuously entertained by their wacky excuses.

Source: Tokai TV, Hachima Kiko
Top image: SoraNews24