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Undokai: Students' Sports Day in Japan
| Article
# : |
20551 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
11 / 1992 |
1,592 Words |
| Author
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Jon Burbank
Jon Burbank is a free-lance photojournalist living in Japan. |
One of the main events of the year in Japan, at least for every family with young children, is the sports outing called undokai, or "exercise meeting." Although it is a standard part of growing up in Japan, it is seldom mentioned in guidebooks or travelogues. The daylong athletic meet is held at every primary school across Japan on a Sunday in late September. Half competition, half festival, it is an unofficial national celebration of kids and the importance of exercise.
Held away from the temples and streets where most festivals take place, undokai is largely inaccessible to the casual tourist. Many adults brush it aside with the blasé attitude that grownups everywhere adopt toward things they reveled in as kids.
But for those who want a glimpse of growing up in Japan and Japanese social character in the making, there are few better opportunities. Combined with the fun of watching cute kids giving it their best shot in a variety of events, a day at an undokai leaves you feeling good and knowing more about Japan than when you came.
I live in an ideal to take in an undokai--a small town about forty-five miles from Tokyo, insulated from all that concrete, grayness, bustle, and noisy well spinning by emerald rice fields and tree-covered hills.
I walked five minutes to the town's primary school a few morning before the scheduled Sunday. As I asked the principal for permission to get as close as I needed to take photos, another teacher (whom I did not know) smiled form her nearby desk and told him my wife's name.
"Ah," said the principal. "She was a student here, and you have a niece and nephew here now. If they don't mind your taking pictures I certainly don't."
I went to the school early, in time to see the kids and teachers hurrying to decorate the field. Strings of flags from countries all over the globe floated in the air--Japan's oft-mentioned "internationalization" at work.
A group of teachers and students was trying to attack several flags under the Japanese flag to run them up the pole together. There were about five different ideas, each tried unsuccessfully before someone finally asked, "What did we do last year?" A student was dispatched to get the teacher who had been in charge, and he had all the flags flying in a few
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