Sports Day - Ganbatte!

A while back, I wrote a blog about Modernising Sports. I thought I had some good ideas. Then I went to my first Japanese Sports Day. I realised that every good ideas in the universe has already been had by a Japanese person, and they somehow incorporated all of them into their annual sports day. Most writers would be crushed by the realisation that nothing they do can measure up to the majestic brilliance of sports day, but I’m different. My plan is to ride on its coattails by describing it to you, in the desperate hope that some of its awesome will rub off on me.

Special note: Since we have been told that taking photos of our students is some kind of illegal, all the photos used in this blog are generic ones from the ‘net and have nothing to do with my life. Except for Voltron. That photo I took myself as he was walking past my apartment.

Okay, quick: Name some sports!

Did you say football, baseball, cricket, basketball, volleyball, netball, soccer, badminton, hockey or lacrosse?

You lose. None of these sports play any role in sports day. Sports day consists of variations on these few things: running (speed), dancing (grace), standing on someone’s back (balance), being tough (strength) and screaming (?Huh?) All of this is accompanied by carnival music from the 1900s and instrumental theme tunes to 70s era movies and TV shows. The whole thing has a kind of circus feel to it. At the risk of sounding insensitive, I thought it was China that trained all their kids to be circus acrobats. Sports Day is proof that Batman should have chosen his Robin from Japan. Know why he didn’t? He didn’t want to be outclassed.

Oh. Hey. Batman. You made it. I got here, like, 6 minutes ago. By running on my hands.

Bouhiki: The rough translation for bouhiki is pole pull. It’s best that you just take my word for it and don’t do a google search for pole pull. As it is, bouhiki was probably invented by a pervert. The essence of the game is squads of girls fighting over a big pole. I mean, come on!

It’s like tug of war, but much more awesome. Instead of dragging the first player on the opposing team over a line, you just dominate the other team until their spirits die and they give up. Then the leader of the winning team takes their bamboo victory pole back to their start point and holds it proudly aloft, like a giant bamboo victory sceptre. The team with the most poles wins.

Nothing I can say here would make bouhiki any more awesome than it already is.

Kibasen: To understand kibasen, you first need to be versed in Japanese school hats and Voltron. When I taught in NZ I was forever getting sashes, untangling the sashes, giving the sashes to my students, telling them wear the sashes across their chests, dammit, not tied around their wrists like ridiculous fabric bangles. Anyway, the Japanese have a much better method of splitting their children into teams. The students wear reversible white and red hats. One team wear their hats on the red side, the other team on the white side. So simple! The hats also provide a useful goal for kibasen. To play kibasen - or Voltron-boy-horse, as I call it - you need at least 4 boys for each team. Three boys hoist the fourth boy (usually the smallest, for obvious reasons) up onto their shoulders.

This is probably how they will actually do kibasen in a couple of years. Personal robot lion technology can't be that far off. They're pretty much the same as Suzuki Swifts.

The boy on top wears either a red or a white hat. When the starting gun goes off, the two groups of three boys making the ‘horses’ will basically just play chicken with each other. The boys on top are where the action’s found. Once their horses get close enough they will use every trick in the book to try and remove the other boy’s hat. There’ll be slapping. There’ll be scratching. There may even be some eye-gouging.

The first round is like a polo match: about eight teams on each side. It’s bedlam. And I mean that in the best possible way. The second round is more intimate. Trapped inside a circle of crouching teachers, the sight of which lends the whole thing an aura of mysticism and ritual, two teams engage in a kind of Voltron-boy-horse cockfight. I wouldn’t be particularly surprised to find that the losing team are sacrificed to some dark god.

Cheerleading: Perhaps not the best descriptor. This is not the cheerleading you are thinking of. This has a lot more guttural screaming and general overall aggression. It’s half martial arts fan dance/half screaming match. That dark god I spoke of earlier, this is the equivalent of his karaoke request. Then he asks everyone to ‘sing the chorus’.

Kumi Taiso: When the circus winds up, they usually pull out the gravity-defying motorbike or something similar that involves flames, Sumatran tigers, swords or a combination of all three. At the end of the baseball they have fireworks. At the end of an action movie the bad guy gets ‘sploded, or impaled on an American flag. It’s called the big finish.

Kumi Taiso is the big finish of sports day. I don’t know what it translates to in English, but it might as well be ‘guaranteed tragedy’. Technically, breaking a limb is not an essential part of kumi taiso. But that’s like saying someone being eaten by a lion is not an essential part of a gladiatorial match. It’s still gonna happen, so you might as well enjoy it. Kumi taiso is where all those times you stood on your brother’s back/stomach/face to ‘teach him a lesson’ actually pays dividends. Every boy at my school took part. Every boy at some point had another boy standing on him or was gripped by the legs with his hands held up like an eagle’s wings. In New Zealand that sort of thing would have an injury rate of about 93%. So, impressive? Yes. Insane? Hell, yes. Kumi taiso!

Kumi taiso next to the running track. Continuing the Japanese tradition of reckless disregard for personal safety.

Conclusion!

To sum up, Japanese Sports Day resembles the Sports Days from NZ that I am used to in the same way that a rap music video resembles an actual trip to the beach. That is, not at all. Sports Day is like war: there’s guns going off, tinny but inspiring music coming from somewhere and before the day is out, there will be a pile of bodies and blood mixed into the dirt.