Vive la mort, vive la guerre!

Today was the winter sports day for the 1st and 2nd grades at my school. Japan is very much at one with the ‘gender role’ and so on this day the sports were Judo and Kendo for the boys and dancing for the girls. The girls were up first; the warm up act for the bamboo-wielding, people-hurling boys. They put on a nice whimsical show, some cutesy jazz-hands and cartoonish dancing to Disney songs. Though i did enjoy class 22H's pretty funny ‘Chicago’ number.

And onto the boys who, after all, were the top billing.

These boys – so quiet, so unwilling to display any enthusiasm in class for fear of ridicule - quite willingly threw themselves into the whirling slashes of each others bamboo swords. My perception of them from class totally changed: no longer will I consider them the entertaining distractions to teaching I once did, for beneath those aloof exteriors lies the samurai lust for violence that Japan seems to keep so well hidden. The boys, whom I thought to be sensitive clowns, turn out to be capable of the most blood-curdling screams of violent intent. As they skipped around the gym floor, part scorpion, part rearing stallion, and thunderously stomped their feet to deliver crack after shattering crack upon their opponents heads, arms and shoulders, I felt intimidated and ashamed. Wrapped up warm in jumpers and coats, travel mug of coffee and digital camera in hand, I stood – a mere teacher of English to these ferocious Asian gladiators.