[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_8iztLC_Vw']

The objective of the game is to topple the opposing team’s pole to a predetermined degree from the ground before the other team reaches the same goal. I have read different variations of the objectives for the game, such as the existence of team flags, and appending them to the top of the pole. If I had to take a gander, these differing of play is probably meant to establish a safer playing environment. I, for one, wouldn’t want to have my little kid to be involved in such a game. Maybe when he or she turns 8.

The game is typically played during a Japanese school’s (yes, even elementary school) annual sports day, although a notable amount have banned the sport due to the very aggressive style of play (polite way of saying that parents are getting soft).

So what are the rules of the game? There isn’t much information available on the game itself, but here is what I’ve gathered:

• Two teams face off with each other. Each team divided into an offense and defense force.
• Offensive force is free to roam anywhere, while the defense force is restricted to an area around the pole.
• Pole’s are around 3-5 meters in length (~ 10-16 feet).
• One end of the pole must be in contact of the ground at all times.
• Game ends when the angle of the pole relative to the ground reaches to the predetermined angle. Typically, 30 degrees off the ground.
• Due to the aggressiveness, footwear is banned (Did you see the guy get stomped in the face in the YouTube video? Ouch…or should I say stinky?)
• Head gear is also encouraged, to limit the effects of the concussion you’ll most like be getting.
• Hand-to-hand combat is strong discouraged, but I suppose kicking is okay?

Photo Credit: Japan Ministry of Defense

Botaoshi is famously played during the National Defense Academy of Japan’s annual induction ceremony of new cadets. Every Spring, the school’s four battalions form teams of 150 students each to fight for their battalion’s honor in front of a crowd of peers and family.

Each of the battalion teams are split into a 75-person defense group and a 75-person offensive group. To distinguish the two, the defensive group’s are equipped with white garb, while the offensive groups wear their battalion colors (green, blue, red, and orange).

If you watch the video, it may at first seem to be an unorganized brawl to topple over the pole, but I assure you there is some strategy to the game. Within each offensive and defensive groups, each person has a role to play out.

[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLb1H26DAII']

Within the defensive group, there exists five important roles:

• Pole support — These people support the pole to the upright position.
• Barrier — The hoards of people that form a barricade around the pole.
• Interference — Harasses and interrupts any opposing force that makes it inside the barrier.
• Scrum Disabler — Scrum is the offensive force’s defensive formation that allows the offensive set up “spring-board humans” to “fly” above the barricade. Take notice in the video where the some of the offensive bend over and allow their backs to be used as a stepping ground for their teammates. The disabler does whatever it can to hinder the formation and stop the offensive from spring-boarding straight to the pole.
• The Ninja (aka Ezio) — This is the person that is standing on the pole and drop kicking anyone’s face that gets near it. Probably one of the most important roles in the defense line up. If the pole is shifting to one side, it is their responsibility to counter the shifting by directing their weight to the opposite side. It doesn’t take much weight to topple over the pole if the offense controls the top of the pole.

As for the offensive group, three important roles exists:

• Springboard/Scrum — Act as stepping blocks for teammates to launch themselves over barricade and straight to pole.
• Pole Attackers — Attack and take over the pole from Mr. Ezio. Responsible for starting the collapse of the pole by using their weight and gravity on the top end of the pole.
• General support attacks — Harassment, distraction, etc.

Header Photo Credit: 3yrsinjapan

In World War 2, the Japanese thought that weapon would be a new battleship, bigger and greater than anything that had been seen before. They called it, the crown jewel of the Japanese navy, the Yamato.

Right from the get-go, you could tell that the Yamato was a pretty big deal. Just the name “Yamato” invokes a lot of imagery in the Japanese psyche.

As Koichi wrote about, Yamato is a name that’s tied to lots of different things that are dear to the Japanese; not only does it refer to an early ethnic group, but also a language, and a time period in Japanese history.

But aside from the name, the ship itself was an impressive feat. It towered over 100 feet, was as long as the Eiffel Tower is tall, and could hold a crew of over 2,000.

Its firepower was a force to be reckoned with. The Yamato carried the largest guns ever mounted on a war ship and could, in theory, blow any opposition to shreds.

But as important as it was, the Yamato never saw much action; it briefly served as the Japanese navy’s flaghip, but because it was such an obvious target, it spend a lot of time in Japanese ports avoiding Allied bombers.

The only time it ever saw substantial usage was in its last, desperate mission.

Operation Ten-Go

Towards the end of WW2, Japanese forces were dwindling and the US military was steadily advancing from the south. Faced with a desperate situation, the Japanese decided to make one last stand, deemed “Operation Ten-Go.”

The plan was to gather the small remains of the Japanese navy and blaze a trail with the Yamato to Okinawa, then beach the ship and use it as a stationary gun mount. With its thick hide and massive firepower, it seemed like a pretty good idea.

Unfortunately for the Japanese, warfare had evolved. The Yamato was built between WW1 and WW2, during which the introduction of the airplane changed how navies fought.

Before, sea battles were basically giant battleships lobbing shell after shell at each other, and whoever had the better range and stronger guns won.

But airplanes were mobile, fast, and effective, and could take down a ship easier than a ship could shoot down an airplane. Fighters, bombers, and aircraft carriers were the new face of naval warfare.

The Yamato was big, clumsy, and slow, making it an obvious and easy target for airplanes to bomb and shoot down.

In short, Operation Ten-Go was over before it even began. A swarm of American planes was able to take out the Yamato with minimal losses. The Yamato exploded and sunk before it ever got to its planned destination, taking down most of its crew with it. In terms of lives lost, it’s the biggest naval disaster in all of history.

The Yamato explodes

Ever since, the Yamato has lay at the bottom of the South China Sea. There are a few memorials in Japan for the Yamato, and a couple of expeditions have made it out to the Yamato’s wreckage.

Living On In Anime, Video Games, And Movies

In some ways, the Yamato lives on. The anime series Space Battleship Yamato (A.K.A. Star Blazers) was in part inspired by the giant WW2 battleship; and in turn, the Yamato cannon in the Starcraft video game series was named after the anime.

There have been at least three movies about the Yamato too, including 2005′s “The Men’s Yamato” (Otokotachi no Yamato).

By most metrics, the Yamato was a colossal failure. It was an expensive, outdated ship that was too little, too late. It failed to protect Japan from its eventual defeat in WW2, and brought thousands of men down with it. In a lot of ways, it was an allegory for the failure of Japan and its imperial ambitions.

But clearly, the Yamato left its mark. It’s hard to ignore such colossal project that once was the pride of a nation.

When it comes to World War 2, there were a lot of funny things going on with Japanese Americans. Land and property were stolen from Japanese Americans, they were put into internment camps (though, not the 157,000 Japanese Americans in Hawaii, including my great great grandmother, who was sending aluminum to Japan to make bombs before the America-Japan conflict started), and now, apparently, there were dogs being trained to sniff out Japanese people. Ironically, they were being trained on Cat Island, a crappy little island just south of Mississippi (and a part of Mississippi too).

Dogs And World War Two

When the US entered the War, it started taking dog donations from civilians. Dogs were used to be sentries, to detect and sniff out mines, and so much more. There was, however, a much more secret dog training mission taking place on Cat Island, where William Prestre (Swiss Refuguee) said he could train dogs to target people of Japanese ancestry based off their smell. According to Prestre, he could train 30,000 dogs that would be released on the beaches of Japanese islands and Zerg rush their inhabitants. Greyhounds would streak across beaches to take out machine gunners (since they’re so speedy), then slower but more terrifying dogs (like Great Danes and Wolfhounds) would wipe the floor with everyone else. Obviously, none of this happened. Thank goodness for the dogs, anyways.

Getting To Cat Island

Cat Island is a little island off of Mississippi that had similar weather and temperature to the Pacific Islands. Apparently, it was also really sulfury, barren, full of alligators and mosquitoes, and a big pain all around. Around 25 people of Japanese ancestry (who were in the U.S. Army) were notified that they would be going on a super secret mission, so secret they couldn’t even tell their friends they were going on it. One of these people, Ray Nosaka, says:

So that morning, they said, “Don’t say anything to your own buddies and don’t goodbye, don’t say anything.” Seven o’clock, we rode the big truck and took us to Wheeler Field [Fort Williams]. And all of us went on a plane.They didn’t tell us where we’re going to go, what we’re going to do.

They got on their plane, stopped off in Tennessee (where they couldn’t get off the plane, because the higher ups didn’t want anyone to see them), then flew to Mississippi where they boarded some coast guard ships which took them to another island near Cat Island called “Ship Island” (seriously, someone should have been commissioned to come up with better island names). At Ship Island, they waited for a while, fished, and didn’t do much. Then, after two weeks, their Major came and told them they would be “training dogs” on  Cat Island. I suppose that’s where the fun starts.

Every day, they’d go by boat from Ship Island to Cat Island, help train the dogs for four hours, then go back home to Ship Island. Besides being attacked by dogs all the time, that’s a pretty sweet gig. Hang out on a tropical island, work 4 hours a day, and drink tons of beer because the water tasted terrible.

We only worked half a day. Half a day, you go back to Ship Island. You go fishing, play guitar and sing a song, things like that, drinking beer. Half a day you work, half a day you’re off. So the hours are very good. That’s why all of us was catching fish. So many fish over there. And now ducks come, shoot the ducks like that. So the life after the four hours we worked is very good.

In fact, at one time we ran out of beer because we cannot drink the water. That thing is so – like rotten eggs. The thing is sulfur, so we cannot drink the water, so we drink up the beer. And, you know, the beer. The thing gone in one week. All gone because we cannot drink the water, we just drink that beer.

So, that begs the question. What were all the secret things they did while they were on the clock, over in Cat Island?

How They (Tried) To Train Dogs To Hunt The Japanese

There were a couple of steps involved in order to try and train dogs to take down Japanese people. The first step was training them to go up to the right people, the second was to learn how to attack, and the third was to play hide and seek.

In the first step, the Japanese Americans would stand there, and the dogs would go up to them. When the dogs went up to them, they’d give the dog some meat and fire a pistol into the air. They did this over and over for four months. I’m guessing the dogs just got good at finding people who had meat on them… yum.

The second step wasn’t as pleasant, unfortunately for the dogs (and the humans involved, too).

And they told us they put a guard over here and we stay like this. And then when the sergeant tell him, “Kill ‘em,” the dog come right up and bite us here, see.  And then finally, the dog got a little more friendly with us. They tied the dog on the fence and they gave me like a whip to hit the dog. I go like this.

Oh, I feel so bad. That’s why I hit like this. I get scolding, tell, “Hit it hard, some more hit” until the thing bleed. That’s why the dog gets mad with you. And they tell ‘em, “Kill him.” I’m like this and, whoa, he bite me all over the place. So I hit the dog until he bled, see. Then he tell me, “Okay, walk ten yards back, turn around and go this way.” The dog was so mad at me because I hit him. Ho, he bite me, bite me like this. And then the sergeant comes, takes him away. And that’s the attack dog.

Lastly, they played hide and seek. They’d go someplace, wait for the dog to come find them, then wait for the dog to go away, then go hide somewhere else. They did all this while batting mosquitoes and avoiding alligators. At least it was only a four hour work day, I guess.

What Happened?

I think you know – the dogs couldn’t tell the difference between Japanese people and other people, and since they were mostly donated dogs from loving families, they’d often just lose interest and become friendly. Our Swiss dog training friend Prestre was fired in Feburary 1943 after a couple of dog shows for the big boys, and the island was converted over to a more traditional dog training island (i.e. no more sniffing out the blood of Japanese people). This went on for a while, but then was eventually closed down in July, 1944 after training approximately 400 dogs.

If you want to read more about Cat Island’s crazy dog training programs, you can read Ray Nosaka’s (one of the 25 Japanese Americans on Cat Island) interview, with the Cat Island parts here and here.

P.S. If you like dogs, you should follow Tofugu on Twitter, Here.

P.P.S. If you like cats, you should subscribe to the Tofugu Newsletter, Here.

Dog trainers of Cat Island

Ship Island is where they’d stay in between trips to Cat Island

Image of Cat Island

Want to read about a more pleasant “Cat Island?” Here’s an island in Japan, populated by cats.