Sports Day

September 22, 2007

Schools all over Japan have been celebrating Undoukai, translated into English as Sports Festival or Sports Day. A more literal translation could be “Exercise Meeting,” and, indeed the games the children play are more fun-and-easy exercises than organized, competitive sports: there are races, relays, tug-of-wars, obstacle courses, dances, and cheerleading.

Different schools have their own special touches. For instance, Kanoya Nogyou, the agricultural high school, has a parade of animals, followed by a chicken-throwing event. Live chickens are literally thrown down from a truck and flutter to the field below, whereupon members of the audience (usually parents and friends) go into a frenzy trying to catch the chickens. They get to keep the chickens they catch and eat them later.

Kanoya Kogyou, on the other hand, has a special dance they do called, I believe, the E Sa Sa. I suppose it helps that, as the technical high school, their population is mostly male. The boys (and there are no girls in this dance) wear blue shorts, no shirts, and form different groups. When the taiko drummer begins the beat, they line up in row. Kneeling down at first, they raise their fist up with a cry. Still kneeling, but with head and chest held erect, they begin to swing their hands, shouting loudly, “E Sa, E Sa, E Sa Sa.” Their cry and the taiko’s drum keeps a steady, pounding rhythmn. I asked an English teacher what “E Sa Sa” means and she said it translated into “Hooray,” but I don’t think the word quite fits. Hooray sounds wimpy. E Sa Sa is a battle cry.

I enjoy relay races and tug-of-wars, but my favorite event I probably the cheerleading. Or I suppose cheering would be a better word; it’s quite different from American cheerleading. In the first place, the entire population of the school participates in these cheers, boys included. The outfits they wear are hot. Temperature hot, I mean: shirts, long pants, long-sleeved jacket buttoned up, and sometimes gloves. Actually, the uniform is very masculine: if you’ve ever seen the boys’ winter uniforms for schools, it’s the same thing. The girls, more often than not, wore these uniforms as well. Rather than pom-poms, the students use their hands or fans or (I saw this for the farming section of Nogyou) giant daikon radishes. They don’t do the same sort of stunts cheerleaders do, but seeing 100 students yelling together and moving together is quite impressive.