Sports Day: Blood, Sweat and Tears in Japan

Team Houou: Phoenix

Picture high medieval times: knights bearing their liege banners and colors charging onto the field with a battle cry on their lips and dreams of glory in their hearts. Parties compete in battles of skill, speed and precision. In the end, honor and pomp go to the victor.

Now, remove the chain mail, the lances, the glossy horses and instead give the knights blue polyester track suits, relay batons and scuffed sneakers.

And you're looking at Sports Day.

Team Ookami: Wolf

Sports Day is an old annual tradition in Japan, proposed by Admiral Archibald Douglas of the British Royal Navy and later created in 1874. And there certainly is a militaristic atmosphere to a few of the elements. The opening ceremony begins with an announcement of the year's theme as students march around the athletic field with the school, city and national flags. At the blast of a whistle, the marching students turn their heads and sharply salute the teachers and honorees under the judge's tents.

Yes, Sports Day is a judged affair.

Judges include teachers, the principal and vice principal, PTA members, Board of Education members and city officials...and sometimes the visiting ALT.

So what is there to see? Well, every school does a few of the same traditional games. Races are the predominant event and they run the gamut...excuse the pun. Relay races, long distance and variations therein. Many schools also have the tug of war, large group jump rope, and my personal favorite; kibasen, cavalry battle. Three boys carry a fourth as the carried boy tries to grab a hat or bandanna off a member of the opposing team.

Let's get going with some Radio Exercising!

Schools customize the traditional games and also add a little flair of their own, too. One of my last schools' variation on kibasen involves the carried boy wearing a helmet and arm bands with balloons. The boys brandish bundles of twigs and pop the other teams' balloons! It's gloriously violent!

Of course, if it was all about the kids, why would the parents and PTA stick around for the whole day? As I sat under the teacher's tent sipping hot tea a student brought over, I thought of all the concerts and talent shows I'd been in as a kid. I'd invite my dad, but his question was almost always "Will you be in the early or later part?" My dad loves me, and of course he's always supported me, but I understand the tedium of a concert when all you want to see is your kid doing their best. It's not selfish to think the sun and the moon of your child. One way the schools entice parents is by coordinating special parts of the program where their involvement might be required. At ゆ中学校, the PTA designed the "Chance Relay" where students raced to pull handwritten tasks from a box and would race to complete the assignment. At a few points, the kids were required to find a teacher or a sibling, a "beautiful" mother or "genki" grandfather and race them across the finish line. Willing participants danced on the sidelines, screaming "Here! Here! Me! Me!"

Even the PTA gets involved!

Actual parents at せい中 got out on the field and played a game where they tossed beanbags into a net on top of a pole before the timer went off.

Even the teachers get involved in one race at せい! In a relay of teachers v. students, I was asked to participate. Teachers wore green polos and ran short distances in competition with the kids. I'm proud to say I didn't trip and fall and secretly suspicious that we let the kids win. Hey, I'm in full support of that. It was their day, after all.

Cheers and dances are also an important part of any Sports Day. Oendan, or cheering groups, are usually all boys, but for events like Sports Days, everyone's voice counts! The sound that comes from these kids, however small or willowy they might be, may as well be the blood-curdling battle cries of the fiercest Celts, Picts or Mongols. Students work for weeks to choreograph and perfectly execute their cheers and dances, often performed to taiko and pop music complete with pom poms and pyramids made of boys.

Students demonstrating kagura dancing

It's also not uncommon to see more traditional dancing. In Iwate, kagura is an old and beautiful style of "god entertainment." At one school, mothers actually design and sew traditional costumes for their children so each student is another snowflake (or as it's spring, cherry blossom): alike in theme and execution but subtly unique.

And really, that's the best way for me to explain the spirit of Sports Day, from my perspective. In Japan, a common mindset is to "hammer down the nail that sticks out." But every once in a while, some excellence is allowed to "stick out." Such parts of the culture include exceptional celebrities, festivals and annual events, especially the beautiful cherry blossom season. Across Japan, the trees come to life after many drab months and the Japanese people go crazy exalting the beautiful flowers. A single tree or a lane of them make a stunning sight, but every blossom makes it a more complete picture. They bud, bloom and fall together in beautiful unison, even the chaotic elegance of the petals falling has a sort of methodic madness to it. And still each flower is singularly lovely.