It's been a while since I've posted about Japanese culture stuff...

Back in March, the school year here in Japan was ending. And with the end of the school year comes graduation ceremonies, and the preparation that goes along with it. Having met a lot of teachers in the Japanese school system, I gathered that there was a big debate among teachers, principals, and school board members in the months of February and March. The point of contention was whether to sing the Japanese national anthem as part of the graduation ceremonies.

In recent history, the Japanese national anthem had not been sung during school graduation ceremonies. Apparently, in the past they did, but it stopped after World War II by order of the school officials. And just recently, those school officials decided to reinstate the ritual to the strong opposition of many teachers and the general public. This is not to say that the Japanese national anthem is not sung anywhere. Most people know the words to the song because of baseball games and other sporting events. And this is deemed "OK." But bring it into the schools and somehow, everyone is against it.

It seems that the national anthem is closely tied to Japan's history of war... especially World War II. This is odd to me because most of the people who are against the idea of bringing the national anthem back into the schools never lived during World War II. Nevertheless, the shame that is tied to the loss in the war and the horrible war crimes Japanese people committed against the surrounding Asian countries lives on through the generations. Patriotism, or nationalism in this respect, is close to non-existant. This is strange because the Japanese take great pride in being "unique" (or so they say) to the rest of the world... that is, in being Japanese.

But I think all this adequately describes how the Japanese view sports. Japanese people don't want to teach their children that "war is good," so they oppose having their children sing the national anthem in the classroom. But to sing the national anthem on the baseball field before the game is ok. To have the national anthem playing in the background as their Olympian won the gold medal stirs up a lot of pride. Could this explain why the Japanese are so incredibly serious/fanatic about their sports? If a sporting event were only a game, there would be no need to be so fanatic... but if there's a war going on in front of you, there's a reason to focus all your energy. Maybe that's the reason why the Japanese people see a little samurai in watching Hideki Matsui hit a homerun.