sports Archives - understand-culture

Crawling to the Sash

At the Princess Ekiden, a women’s relay race, in October 2018, Iida Rei, a 19-year-old runner for Iwatani Sangyō, broke her right shin. She crawled on all fours to hand the tasuki, the team’s sash, to the next runner. Reports give the distance she crawled as 200 meters, 250 meters or about 300 meters.

On television afterward, the sociologist Furuichi Noritoshi proposed that a runner who cannot go on should be allowed to pass the sash from where she stops. The host, Ogura Tomoaki, replied: Sore jā ekiden no imi ga nai wake deshō. Then there would be no point in an ekiden.

Two Sponsors

An applicant to the Kasumigaseki Country Club is recommended by two members. According to a report in Gendai Business, these two sponsors carry a heavy responsibility. The club takes its time to judge the applicant’s character.

Without passing the screening, the report says, no one can join, even with 100 million yen. After admission is decided, the new member plays a round of golf with a director of the club.

Seventeen Innings

In a 1998 quarterfinal of the national high school baseball tournament at Kōshien, Yokohama beat PL Gakuen in 17 innings. Yokohama’s ace, Matsuzaka Daisuke, threw 250 pitches.

From the spring tournament of 2018, Kōshien introduced a tiebreak. From the 13th inning, each team began its turn at bat with runners on first and second base and no outs. The start of the tiebreak was later moved to the 10th inning.

Chanko in Order of Rank

In a sumo stable, the wrestlers eat chanko, the stable’s stew, around a low table, a few at a time, in order of rank. The highest-ranked eat first. The lower-ranked wrestlers serve the meal.

The Regeneration Factory

Nomura saisei kōjō, the Nomura regeneration factory, was the name for the baseball manager Nomura Katsuya’s skill at reviving players who had struggled elsewhere. The sports magazine Number calls the pitcher Tabata Kazuya its finest product. Tabata came to the Yakult Swallows from Daiei. In his first season under Nomura, he started 25 games and went 12 and 12. In his second, he went 15 and 5.

Nomura later said, as Number reports: Tabata ni kagirazu, puro yakyū senshu wa honno hitokoto no adobaisu de kawaru kēsu ga ōō ni shite aru. This is true not only of Tabata. A professional ballplayer is often changed by a single word of advice. Mostly, Nomura added, it is because the player’s earlier thinking was wrong.

The Stable’s Mother

In a sumo stable, the stablemaster’s family and all the wrestlers “eat rice from the same pot” and “live under one roof,” as an article on nippon.com puts it. The article calls the stablemaster’s wife, the okamisan, probably the most important person behind the scenes. She manages the money, arranges the parties of supporters and deals with patrons. She also serves as mother to every wrestler and teaches them manners.

Group Action

Students of Nippon Sport Science University perform shūdan kōdō, group action, at the university’s physical education demonstration. Long lines of students march, turn and pass through one another’s lines. TV Tokyo explains that a diagonal crossing needs exact spacing, stride and timing, or the performers collide. In one show in Abashiri, reported by the Hokkaido Shimbun, 103 students took part.

Japanese Wikipedia credits Kiyohara Nobuhiko, a professor emeritus of the university, with researching and developing it. The students are volunteers and train three days a week for five months. According to TV Tokyo, the practice reportedly began in the university’s dormitories as a way to learn omoiyari, consideration for others.

Unpaid Volunteers

On September 26, 2018, recruitment began for the volunteers of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The organizing committee sought 80,000 Games volunteers and Tokyo 30,000 city volunteers, 110,000 in total. The volunteers were unpaid.

Critics asked whether this was yarigai sakushu, exploiting people’s sense of worth, as at a “black company.”

Fourth-Year Gods

Yonen kamisama, sannen tennō, ninen shimin, ichinen dorei: fourth-year students are gods, third-year students are emperors, second-year students are citizens, and first-year students are slaves. A 1991 paper in a bulletin of Kagoshima University cites the phrase as a way in which the hierarchy of university sports clubs was mocked and criticized.

The sports magazine Number used a short form in a headline that rejects it: Yonen kamisama, ichinen dorei de wa nai. It is not fourth-year gods and first-year slaves.

A Master First

The usual road to becoming a professional shogi player runs through the shōreikai, a training association with its own entrance examination. An article in Gendai Business names one more condition for entering it: Kishi no shishō ga hitsuyō na no da. A master who is a professional player is needed.