Ah, here we are again, at another long weekend. Autumn is just replete with them though this one I never seem to get to celebrate. While my daughter has attended Japanese nursery school in the previous years, we never managed to be in town for the annual Sports Day festival. This year, she actually attended a day of her old school in Kumamoto when we went back “home” the other weekend and practiced for their undokai but alas, her international school in Tokyo doesn’t really do Japanese holidays.
So I still have no “original material” for this annual post. My apologies. I’ll once again “recycle” last year’s post below, so you at least know what the holiday is about. As for me, I’ll be celebrating Sports Day with a walk in the woods, the best exercise I can think of!
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Most people living in Japan associate the national Sports Day (or Taiiku no Hi in Japanese) with an undokai, an athletic gathering or sporting event. However, Japan has been promoting undokai in educational institutions long before the holiday became a legal one. October 10th was the date of the first official Sports Day, stemming from the date of the opening ceremonies of the Tokyo Olympic Games held in 1964. (Since 2000, Sports Day is observed on the 2nd Monday of October so that it always ties into a weekend.) The first undokai, however, was organized nearly a century and a half ago at the Imperial Naval College. It was inspired by the request of a visiting British Royal Naval admiral to host a European-style sporting event at the college. Some of the main events at this 1874 gathering included a three-legged race, a race where water buckets were toted on heads and even a pig-chase.
From here, Sports Day spread throughout the university level and eventually filtered on down to primary education, encouraged by an education minister in the Meiji era (1868-1912) who made gymnastics a compulsory part of schooling. Undokai were once held on the grounds of nearby shrines or civic halls, but today they are almost exclusively held on a school’s own grounds. I attended an undokai with my daughter last year and can equate it to the Fun Day we used to hold at my elementary school. There are a few introductory speeches and the singing of the national anthem, but after that it’s just a showcase of races, dances and sports-related games or challenges. Families are invited and its common for everyone to bring a bento and picnic in the schoolyard for lunch.
Sports Day has even spread to the corporate culture, with new start-ups offering Sports Day packages to large firms and their employees. While I have since returned to the working world in Tokyo, I am very glad of my part-time status as I’d rather leave the sack races to the kids!
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