My friend Alice just posted an extremely bizarre set of photos she took in Japan of The Crying Sumo Festival, in which sumo wrestlers hold babies aloft and compete to make them cry the loudest. The traditional ceremony is conducted to ward off evil spirits.

If holding the babies aloft in front of the crowd and yelling the word “cry” in Japanese over the loudspeaker doesn’t make the babies cry, the overgrown wrestlers grimace, yell, or don scary masks to get the infants crying.