Figure 1.--This postcard-back portrait shows Japanese primary boys playing a wide game in the early-1900s. We would guess the 1910s. They are students from the Shuei Elementary School in Osaka. This apparently was a school of some importance. There is a mounment at the the old site of Municipal Shuei Elementary School in Osaka. We can't read the textpn the front. There is also some text on the back. Click on the image to see it.

We do not know what these games are called in Japan. The term in the West is 'wide games'. They were popular in Scouting and summer camping. They were a kind of mock combat, but in Scouting the level of actual contact was strictly limited. We have no information about the late-19th century when the Japanese school system was founded, but we see wide games in the early-20th century which appear to involve a fair degree of violence, virtual fighting among the boys. This seems similar to the Hitler Youth in Germany where these wide games did involve fighting among the boys. But in Japan we do not notice it with camp activities, but as part as normal activities at primary school. It is not clear if this was som part of recess, PE or some kind of special event. We notice this well before the military negan to intervene so strongly in civilan life (1920s-30s). We are not sure to what extent these violent games were adooted from the West or if there was some traditional basis for them. Nor do we knowif the level of violence was a military influence or something countenced by a completed civiln educational establishment. We know that beginning in the 1920s thatvthe military began taking an increasing interest in the schools. We are not sure, however, about the early-1900s. This would have fed into the military's Ketsugo effort. What we do know is that not country had so fully prepared their young men for war than Japan, even beyonf that of the NAZIs. This was all discontinued after the war, at least the levl of violence associated with the games.

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Created: 8:15 AM 11/22/2017
Last updated: 8:15 AM 11/22/2017