 So it's a real pleasure to welcome Aaron here tonight. So Aaron is a socio-cultural anthropologist and he teaches at two places actually. He teaches at California State University East Bay and also St. Mary's College of California. And he's published widely on education, sports, culture, power, violence and social justice in Japan. And tonight he's gonna be talking about his book that came out a while ago called Discourses of Discipline in Anthropology of Corporal Punishment in Japan's School and Sports. And it's currently being translated into Japanese and it's already available pre-order on Amazon if you want to get the Japanese version. And I think that's pretty much, you know, when you get translated into Japanese that's pretty much evidence that it's good stuff, right? Or at least it's gonna make waves in Japan. So congratulations on that forthcoming publication. So he's gonna talk us through his research tonight and we'll have time for a Q&A at the end. Just a reminder, I'll remind you again later but please type your questions into the Q&A button at the bottom of your screens. There's no ability to raise your hand or use your microphone so everything comes through the Q&A button. And I'm gonna hand over to Aaron. He's gonna upload his presentation. I'm gonna just turn my camera off and everything while he does that and I'll come back later. It's a real pleasure to have you, Aaron. Welcome. Thank you very much, Helen. That's a very, very nice introduction and I really appreciate you and Charles Thailandier of still inviting me and welcoming me to this research seminar series. It's a real honor to be here. I did my graduate studies in the UK and so I wish I could physically be in the UK right now giving this talk because I have fantastic memories of my time living there and miss it every day. So I know that we have a very global audience today but I just wanted to make that known to all the people who live in Britain. So today I'll talk about the research I've done on Corporal Punishment in Japan and I title the discourse or discipline the same title as my book which as Helen nicely pointed out is being translated and it should be out in about a month. So if you know anyone who is interested in this topic and reads Japanese or prefers to read in Japanese over English please let them know about that. So the presentation today I'll follow this loose format. I'll talk about Corporal Punishment worldwide a little bit in the UK and the US keeping in mind please that I'm no expert on Corporal Punishment in either the US or the UK but then I'm gonna shift gears and talk about what's called Taibatsu in Japan. And I'm going to talk about its definition and how it's quite difficult to define exactly what it is. And then because of that I'll encourage you to think about the different contexts in which it takes place and why including socialization, the education system, links to the economy and then sports. And finally I'll talk about some purported causes that people believe are the reason why Corporal Punishment or Taibatsu exists in Japan. And I just wanna point out that in the book itself there's a lot more than what I'll be able to talk about today just due to time constraints. Chapter two is about history. Chapter four is about ethics. Chapter five I go through some critiques of Nihonjin-roland explanations of Taibatsu. These are theories of Japanese-ness that play a pretty significant role in the explanations of Taibatsu. And then I also have a final chapter on power and discipline where I apply Fukodian theory to an analysis of why Taibatsu seems to persist in Japan. And so unfortunately I wanna have time to go over that today. I mean, we can talk about it in the Q&A if anybody's interested. But that's the loose outline for today. And I really do look forward to this Q&A. In fact, I think I'm looking forward to the Q&A more than anything because I've talked about corporal punishment in Japan so much and I'm looking forward to learning something new about it from all of you. So without further ado, this is a little bit about me. My training is actually in political theory and philosophy as well as social anthropology. And a lot of my work is multidisciplinary as a result of that. I teach actually in kinesiology departments which is the study of the moving body at universities in the United States and I also work for Japan Intercultural Consulting on the side. So as Helen mentioned, these are the interests that I have as a researcher, politics and philosophy of the moving body, sports and society. And as education, coaching, pedagogy, culture, discipline, violence, gender, power and athlete and on scholar activism. So I'm currently working on a few different projects. One is a book that I've been working on for quite a long time now about big time women's college basketball in the United States has nothing to do with Japan at all but it is a really fascinating topic nonetheless. And I'm also drafting a book now on basketball in Japan which I hope to submit to a press soon. So I also am really interested in this idea of scholar activism and engaged anthropology and so I'm writing an article about that right now and I'm going to be launching a podcast soon called The Power of Sports which is related to that engaged anthropology project that I'm doing. And finally, these are my two sons, Morrison and Emmanuel, we call Maury and Manny just so we can confuse everybody in our family. I am not the only one who calls the older one by the younger ones name and the younger one by the older ones name. It does happen quite a bit. And speaking of children, the United Nations as many of you may know had a convention on the rights of the child in 1989. And what some people don't know is that in that convention there's actually something about corporal punishment and that is if you believe that corporal punishment is a form of violence or abuse and not all people do but this is what the article 19 of the convention reads and it says, party shall take all appropriate legislative, administrative, social and educational measures to protect the child from all forms of physical or mental violence, injury or abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation, including sexual abuse while in the care of parents, legal guardians or any other person who has the care of the child. So since that time, oops I can't, there we go. Since that time there have been more countries that have banned corporal punishment in some settings but not all settings. And so it's important to really distinguish when we talk about corporal punishment, the setting that we're talking about, it could be the home, it could be the school, it could be the penal system and all other alternative care settings. In my research, I focused primarily on the school and sports but as you can see here by 2009 there were 27 countries that have ratified the UN CRC, the Convention on the Rights of the Child and in terms of all spaces where corporal punishment might occur. So that's not really that many if you think about it. And this source for this image here is from Save the Children, Sweden. And you can see there's a lot of countries missing from this and this is countries with a ban on corporal punishment of children. And part of the reason for this is because there's very few countries relative to the total number of countries that ban corporal punishment in the home. There seems to be a disincentive for politicians to put a ban on parents using this practice against their own children. But schools are a different matter often because they're funded by the state and there's legal liability that is at stake but it's important to distinguish between these two realms. Unfortunately, we really just don't have great global data on bans and sports settings and I would love to see more of that come out over the next few years because I do think that corporal punishment or violence and abuse in various forms including hazing from senior to junior members of sports clubs is something that you see worldwide. How much of a problem it is, well, it's very difficult to say because again, we don't have great global data. Just a little bit about corporal punishment in the UK or some context. Corporal punishment is prohibited in all settings in Scotland and Wales. Prohibition is still to be achieved in the home some alternative care settings, state care and penal institutions in England and Northern Ireland. But in other words, it is prohibited in the schools of England and Northern Ireland. And this is again the sources of this advocacy group called endcorpalpunishment.org which has a great number of resources if you're interested on corporal punishment globally but they say that corporal punishment is prohibited in the UK and all state supported education in 1986. And the prohibition was extended to cover private schools in England and Wales in 1998 and Scotland in 2000 and in Northern Ireland in 2003. But in 2014, the government confirmed that legislation does not prohibit corporal punishment in unregistered independent settings providing part-time education. So that's kind of an interesting little nuance there which I'd love to get feedback from any of you who live and work in settings related here. So one interesting study I came across recently was this notion that, pardon me, English law might actually be to blame for fewer bans on corporal punishment in schools. You can see this graph here from a website called The Conversation which was written by some scholars in the United States. And if anybody wants the information I can share it with you later. But apparently if the country has an English legal origin then they're less likely to have banned corporal punishment in schools which I think is quite interesting. Now on the other hand, you can see in this graph that bans in both English legal origin countries and other legal origin countries have been growing since the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. So if you are not a fan of corporal punishment then you might consider this to be progress. Now the question becomes whether this law, this English legal origin issue has anything to do with what's called enloco parentis or restraints on state actors. And so the US Supreme Court has decided that public schools have more limited authority to use corporal punishment than private schools because in the latter the doctrine of enloco parentis applies. So this means in the place of the parent. And the idea is that a parent can transfer their authority to discipline or punish their children to a teacher. And I suppose that in a private school if parents are paying a lot of money for their children to be there then this principle applies. But on the other hand, there is not the same right transferred in private schools. So it seems that state law overrides a teacher's right to physically punish in some states well, and others the distinction between public and private schools is essential in determining whether a teacher has this right and to what degree she or he can exercise it. And you can see this on this next slide, just one second, this is the next slide. You can see in the United States there are many states that happen to be known as politically red states that have legal corporal punishment still in schools, but in many of the blue states which are represented here in blue as well, pardon me, they ban corporal punishment in schools. So I'll just go back here a couple of slides to show you this question. If English law is to blame is it because of the principle of in local parentis? Now the corresponding phrase in Japanese is Oya no kawari and holds that teachers are standards for parents. But we don't really have any legal basis to answer these following questions. What about sports coaches? Does the same apply to them? What if they are teachers at the school? What if the sports club is affiliated with the school? What if it is not? So again, similar to the data on prohibitions of corporal punishment prevalence of corporal punishment in sports, we just don't know whether this right is being transferred to sports coaches or not and whether it should be. So I find this really to be quite an interesting statement again from this and corporalpunishment.org but they say there's no prohibition in the United States at a federal level in all public and private schools. In 1977, the US Supreme Court found that the 8th Amendment which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment did not apply to school students and that teachers could punish children without parental permission. Just makes me think of Pink Floyd and I forget the name of the song, maybe it's another brick in the wall but this really does sort of feed into distaste for schools that I think a lot of American students have which is unfortunate but why shouldn't students in the United States be covered by the 8th Amendment which protects them, should protect them from cruel and unusual punishment? I think that's a very strange decision by the US Supreme Court. Okay so you can see here's another graph of the United States and you can see where there appears to be more corporalpunishment than in other places. Again, really focused down in the Southern region of the United States and a lot of states that are politically red. So the question is really why? Why aren't there more bands and why don't these bands seem to work especially as I'll show you later in sports settings. It does seem to be the case that this kind of thing happens and I think this New Yorker cartoon speaks a little bit to the answer. It says, you have a coach talking to young soccer players and saying, excuse me, football players, I have to know your audience and he says, and the way you kids kick ass today will speak volumes about the leaders of tomorrow you will be. So this is really, it's an unproven notion. In fact, there's a book about this by Miracle and Reece called Lessons of the Locker Room, The Myth of School Sports but there's this really unproven notion that the way you play sports will show your leadership capability or your ability to succeed in the quote unquote real world afterwards. And so sometimes this notion is used to condone the use of violence, corporal punishment, discipline in various forms. So as Helen noted, my focus here has been on Thai bots or corporal punishment in the United States but they're really not exactly the same thing. And I go to quite a lot of length in the book to try to figure out where one definition ends and where the other begins. And so chapter one is about that and I'll talk a little bit about that here today. But you can see the contents here if you're interested in learning more. So this was already mentioned but this is the translation of the book which you can pre-order and I just really quite excited to see this in Japanese. I really don't frankly know why it's being translated into Japanese to comment on Helen's question or comment earlier but I think Japanese people are often fascinated by what foreigners have to say about them and it's probably nothing more than that. So I wanna start with a short video and I have to stop my share here. This is a trailer for a film that I think some of you may have already seen but if you're interested in this topic but bear with me as I pull it up here. Okay, fine, my next slide here. So this film follows a kind of a similar pattern to a lot of sports films. There's kind of a story of an underdog making it to a tournament that they're not supposed to make it to against all odds and the coach is often this kind of coach they're called commander style coaches or made a got that in Japanese and the players are implored to do what the coach says whatever it may be no matter how much pain no matter how much sacrifice and you can see even one of the players in this trailer vomiting during some of the training and I hate to make a joke about it but I wonder if the actor actually vomited or if that was something that they staged but the idea is so prevalent in Japan in baseball at the very least. I think other sports are different and so I want to make that distinction clear right away but I think the training is very common in baseball because they have this national tournament called Koshien and this is the tournament that this Okinawa team is trying to make and Koshien and the stakes are just incredibly high. It's sort of similar to the NCAA basketball tournament here in the United States and but it's high school kids and so there's just this emphasis on education and training and at any cost in order to make it there. So it's not just how you play the game to get there it's also the metal or the grit that you show in the process. And so this film is playing off of that drama. So I'd be curious for people's thoughts on this film at the end of the presentation today. Oops. So part of the problem though is how do we define tibatsu? I mean it's a word that is actually new to the Japanese language, relatively new that is. And so in the West we have definitions that I think approximate what is known as tibatsu in Japanese but they're not exactly the same. So let me share this one from some psychologists who think that cross-cultural research on corporal punishment is essential which I sympathize with. They say physical punishment refers to the direct or indirect infliction of physical discomfort or pain on a youth by a parent or other person in a position of authority over the youth usually for the purpose of stopping a youth's unwanted behavior or the purpose of preventing the recurrence of an unwanted behavior or because the youth failed to do something sure he was supposed to do. Now in the video the coach is obviously punishing these people, these young boys physically. I mean they're having physical impact on them but the question of whether it's tibatsu or not is up in the air really. And so it depends on who you ask. Now the education scholars, Hyman and McDonald, McDonald add that the infliction of pain is not limited to striking a child with a paddle or a hand but any excessive discomfort such as forcing the child to stand for long periods of time, confining one in an uncomfortable space or forcing a child to eat obnoxious substances fits the description. Now in Japan these definitions are somewhat helpful I think but sometimes what acts are considered corporal punishment are often rather different. So the term tibatsu can mean many of the aforementioned things but it can also mean sitting with ones and ease curled up behind the buttocks or seiza, holding buckets of water for extended periods of time or homon, forced cleaning or boxing of the ears. And one author even suggested that the forced attendance of regular class lessons by the state ought to be included in the definition of tibatsu. So the reality is that Japanese have never clearly defined what tibatsu is and what it is not and the definition has been contested ever since the term was coined in the Meiji area and so it's really important to look back at that moment in time. So here are two of the people that were involved in coining this term. Tanaka Fujimoto was a Ministry of Education official in the Meiji period and he came across the English term corporal punishment and in 1867 New Jersey law banning the practice in that state's public schools while he was participating on the Iwakura mission and we think it was sometime between 1871 and 1873 that he found this. So this New Jersey law actually later became the basis for Japan's own national prohibition. At the time David Murray is also pictured here, a Rutgers professor who was working for the Japanese government likely assisted Tanaka with the translation of the English term into tibatsu and may have even encouraged the Japanese government to enact a ban on this newly coined Japanese word. I mean, after all he was coming from that particular state Rutgers University is in New Jersey and he may have thought that that was the right thing to do. But you can see that this decision to ban corporal punishment was actually quite controversial even within the Japanese government. If you look here at this table, when it was banned initially in 1879 it was then repealed six years later then prohibited again in 1890 and then repealed again in 1900 and you can see it just back and forth. But part of the problem here is that the terms that are used in these laws are not precise and not exactly clear enough for educators to know exactly whether they can use tibatsu or not and exactly what they can do. So particularly there's this issue of the difference between choukai and tibatsu but neither of these terms is really satisfactorily defined in these laws. So educators have often misunderstood the terms or conflated their meanings. And as I say, the definition has been contested. So here's one example of that these being contested in the mid-1980s the Japan's Ministry of Education used the following definition for tibatsu. Basically something that brings about a degree of physical suffering as a result of the body being violated by a physical act an act to a student that cannot be tolerated by social norms. However, not all acts that violate the body are prohibited as tibatsu. Light striking that does not injure is a common method used as disciplined by fathers and older brothers. So long and so long as it is not based on the mere anger of a teacher or school principal the light hitting of the body that does not injure is actually accepted as discipline. And notice the difference here between discipline and tibatsu. In other words, there are times when striking is the most effective educational method. If it is just a light smack to the body to the degree that it can be accepted as the whip of love or Ainomuchi striking can be allowed. But what's interesting is then just a year later the Japan Federation of Bar Associations offered a rather different definition of tibatsu. They said that it was acts that control through force situations of violent destruction of school property violence against teachers, violence among students or bullying among students are not tibatsu. However, if such acts come to exceed mere control and in that instance become incidents of hitting or kicking then we can call such acts tibatsu. So what I find interesting is that while the Ministry of Education definition highlights the issue of suffering that physical punishment can cause and therefore the distinction between light hitting and heavy hitting the Federation of Bar Associations focuses on those acts that exceed the justifiable goal of maintaining control. In other words, in attempting to draw a line on the limits of physical discipline the Ministry of Education definition focuses on the mildness of the act and the need for an educator to consider the outcome an act of physical discipline may have on an individual while the Federation of Bar Associations focuses on tibatsu's relationship to the common good. So to me, this is a fascinating example of how different institutions in Japan have vastly different cultural priorities and value. And I put cultural and air quotes here because I think that it challenges us to really ask ourselves what is the culture of Japan in terms of its relationship to tibatsu. So of course, neither of these definitions by the Ministry of Education nor the Federation of Bar Association accounts for the thoughts of all Japanese people neither at the time they were drafted nor today. And I think that Professor Roger Goodman's description of this definitional problem two decades ago still rings true. He wrote, the definition of physical abuse in the late 1980s and 90s, early 1990s was also unclear in Japan. Much of the uncertainty reflected by scholars related to the fact that the use of physical force against children was described using a number of different expressions, tibatsu, corporal punishment, choukai, disciplinary punishment, gyakutai, abuse, and the more general term, shitsuke, training or discipline. So opinion surveys suggest that the sorts of acts Japanese people considered to be tibatsu have changed over the years. For example, in 1986, teachers were surveyed and they were found to believe that tibatsu referred to all kinds of bodily punishment, hitting with a rod or something like it, kicking, punching with the fist, making a child sit in seiza for a long time or slapping. But a survey from about a decade later found that tibatsu perceptions had changed. Now punching with the fist and sitting in seiza for any length of time were considered less relevant to the definition of tibatsu, but slapping was considered slightly more applicable. So again, social norms are changing and even the forms of discipline are changing as time passes. So as a result of all this, the term tibatsu has evolved to connote very different meanings to different people in Japan, as well as very different meanings from the English term corporal punishment, which I think has opened up space for many discourses of discipline to develop. And that's really what the book is about. It's about how this has been a very contested term and people have very different views of it based upon their different philosophies of education and sports training. So even within the government itself, it seems that there's been enough confusion to change the behavior and the activities of the government. So in the early 2000s, I was following this issue and realized that they just stopped taking statistics. And so I wrote to the Ministry of Education and I said, why was that the case? And this is their response. They said, until the 2004 surveys, we first undertook statistics in a survey called Survey Regarding Various Problems in the Guidance of Students. This used an extremely vague definition and we published the results as the number of incidents of what is thought to be tibatsu in schools. In order for incidents to be counted as actual cases of tibatsu, we had to assume that many of the incidents would be disputed. And on the other hand, we were not saying that each incident was officially an incident of tibatsu. That is why we decided after discussion within the department to stop collecting the statistics. We still considered tibatsu to be a problem, but it just so happened that we had to stop collecting statistics at that time. And I think that just shows you kind of the level of confusion that the term elicits in every area of Japanese society. So with either a clear definition or a clear prohibition to go by, many in Japan are confused about what this term for corporal punishment in Japanese, tibatsu actually means. So I think that all of this is to say that we really have to focus on the contexts in which various forms of discipline are used for educational purposes, how they're used and why. And we have to kind of disentangle the different terms that are used in the process. So let me talk a little bit about these contexts of tibatsu. The first thing I should note here, and I'll thank Professor Peter Kay for this reference here. But when I describe context, I'm considering schools and sports together. And I know there are differences, but the reason I do this is because in Japan sports clubs are often part of the education system and because both are structured and managed in order to contribute to overall human development. And so school sports thus function as a shadow realm of education. So officials at Japan's Ministry of Education believe that sports and physical education could build social character and foster moral education. And the Japan Sports Association and various national sports federations also assert that sports should be functioned as a part of school education and for character formation. And since 2011, the Japan Sports Agency has taken over the governance of some sports policies. This was in the lead up to the 2020, now it's 2021 Tokyo Olympics. But as you can see here from this quote from their website, most of what they are in charge of is not related to sports as education. And my focus here of course is on that issue of how sports are used as educational tools. So the JSA aims to ensure all citizens with opportunities to play sport, realize a healthy and longevity society, promote regional and economic revitalization through sport. And a lot of this has to do with the Olympics, as I say there's three, four goals here that they have in terms of the Olympics. But MEX is still, and when I say MEX Ministry of Education is what I mean there, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. MEX still governs national sports policy in Japan as it relates to education. And this is, in some respects, globally unique. So sports were introduced to Japan when it adopted a new Western education system in the Meiji period. And they were adopted, spread and controlled by and through this education system, both high schools like Ichigo and also universities like Waseda and KO. And they're still widely seen as educational endeavors. And many youth in Japan play sports and much is learned through them as a result. So you have these statistics from the Sasakawa Sports Foundation that suggests that almost every Japanese youth is playing some kind of sport or getting some kind of exercise on a regular basis, which as an American I have to say is quite outstanding because we don't have that same thing here in the United States. And almost half of young Japanese actively participate in the sports club of some kind and most of these clubs are affiliated with schools. So the idea here is that these clubs, these school sports clubs are said to foster self-discipline teamwork and hard work among other qualities. Now, the way that this relates to the training that exists in sports is that there's a perceived connection here between the training that one gets in education and classrooms that is and on sports fields and sports courts. And then what that will lead to. So historically, and when I say historically and talking most about this era between 1960s and 1980s, a strong education system and a strong labor market established clearly demarcated life stages and transitions between these life stages for young Japanese people. If they did their schoolwork and they did well in their schoolwork, they could expect to get a good job afterwards. And recently this has been changing since insecure labor is more common than ever. As you can see from this graph here from Professor Genda Yuji, but there's much more ordinary non-regular and temporary or daily non-regular work in recent years than there was in the 1980s and before. And so you can't say that jobs in corporate Japan are as plentiful as they were. There's not as much lifetime employment. There's the number of part-time workers has increased. And so there's this debate over how to restore Japan's economy to its once elevated status. And education and sports are both part of this debate. So the training in sports has quite a, there's quite a lot at stake. So this is kind of a rough diagram of this process from school or sports to work transition. The ideas and classrooms, you're gonna learn cognitive, social and emotional skills. You're gonna practice them on the sports fields by learning how to do isatsu and learning how to deal with your Senpai or your Kohai in these senior to junior relationships. And then if you perform all these functions well, you can expect to get a good job and get along with others in that job. So the idea here is guidance or shido, which I think is a really key concept in Japan. It's this idea that there's a cultural value afforded to older Japanese helping younger Japanese and the notion of hierarchy itself, which highlights Japan's honor for the experience and consequent wisdom of its elders. So in fact, Shidoshia is a popular way to refer to a sports coach in Japan. And by the way, I've always thought this is a really fantastic aspect of Japanese culture. For whatever that's worth, this kind of mentorship or guidance is not quite as common in my home country of the United States. I've always thought this is quite a wonderful aspect of Japanese culture. But of course there are challenges that exist in this education system. You have discipline issues, school violence, bullying, suicide incidents. Some adolescents refuse to attend school and somebody even locked themselves in their room at home. And so as a result of some of this, there have been over many years reforms to the education system that have attempted to give young students a chance to breathe, more room to breathe, they called it in the Yutori Kiyoku educational reforms. And one of the things that happened was they shortened the school week, there's more integrated study options aimed to foster enhanced creative and independent critical thinking skills. And students are no longer expected to memorize every bit of information their teachers offer. I think the question that I have, and I'd be really curious for everyone's thoughts on this particular issue, but whether there's room to breathe in club sports and whether it depends on the particular sport, particular school, something like that, because I think my sense is that some of the intensity that once existed in the Japanese classroom may have been transferred to the sports fields. And I wonder if that's the reason that we see that burnout is not uncommon and why perhaps sports clubs are considered to be a hotbed for hazing and taibatsu. And there's one professor in Japan, Nami Uchiro Ryo, who has written about what's called Burakubu Katsu, this idea that some of these clubs can really be a dark place for young people. So with that in mind, I wanna share one more brief video. If you'll bear with me here. This is an interview that is done on YouTube that is called Bukatsu Japanese School Sports Clubs that are extreme. And here we go. I just wanna play about a minute of it for you. That's where I wanna stop it. It's really interesting video if you have a chance to watch. I can share the link for anyone who's interested, but let me go back to my presentation here. So the idea here is that the physical training, the hard, they call it Hado training, or this hard training that is done in sports, whether it's defined as taibatsu or not is a separate issue. But the idea is that this hard training or strict training is actually really good, not only for your body in terms of preparing you for the sport itself, but also for your mind and your mental toughness. And leaving aside the author of this video talking about how extreme this is or how crazy it is. I think the question becomes, why do so many Japanese people believe that this kind of training is good for the mind, body and spirit? And so I'd love to talk more about that in the next Q&A. So in Japan, we have lots of different life stages that are imagined here. And I just wanna highlight a couple of them in this talk. One is this period of childhood and then adolescence. And what happens here is there's these processes of enculturation and socialization where younger members of society are trained to become adults and learn values necessary and appropriate to that society. So as you saw in the video, this young man believes that his hard training and his sport will lead him to be mentally tough and that that will help to prepare him for society and the working world. But of course these processes differ from culture to culture. So between the ages of about one to 12, most Japanese educators believe young children should be protected and enjoy their childhood. And part of this is based on some notions of personhood that go all the way back to Confucianism, particularly this idea of seizen setsu, which is really kind of the opposite of original sin. People are born good. And two old Japanese sayings suggest this notion. They say the first six years of life are in the hands of the gods and children have neither sin nor pollution. This contrasts quite a bit I think with our Judeo-Christian notions in the West. And early childhood education as a result emphasizes interdependence, mutuality of trust, high value accorded to successfully filling one's role and social skills before academic skills. So you have these ideal portraits of a good student or child in Japan being successfully maneuvering within the group and being obedient to elders. So I taught in elementary and middle schools in rural Japan. So I saw a lot of these expectations of Japanese children firsthand. And teachers often use this term sunao to describe elementary school third graders that remember in particular these students, they said were more spontaneous than older students because they were less fearful about taking risks or making mistakes. But a lot of that starts to change in middle school when young Japanese are in this adolescent period of their human development. And the idea here is that they should be facing a rigid regime of strict discipline and greater responsibility. And sports clubs are kind of called upon to be part of that. Now, once we get into this period of emerging adulthood in 18 to 25, then young people are given a chance to kind of explore their passions, including sports. And so it's interesting that you see the hard training in the TaiBatsu not disappear, but it doesn't seem to be as prevalent in college sports in Japan. But going back to adolescence, you see there's this notion of kejime, which is this idea that after they're protected up until about age 12, now young Japanese are expected to learn how to fit into the group and learn the social skills necessary, how to make distinctions. And that's literally what kejime means. So mastering kejime or making these distinctions includes learning the proper use of virtual language and polite greetings, cultivating the ability to seamlessly adapt to both formal and informal social situations and adjust one's expectations, behaviors and speech according to the moment's contextual demands. So the question becomes where sports-based discipline fit into this context of human development. And I think that sports give young Japanese a steady social base, a family away from home, a sense of belonging, a structured daily routine and a sense of accomplishment. Most of the young Japanese I spoke with embrace this opportunity and speak positively about their role within the team, even if they do not necessarily play in the games as much as their teammates. So here's one university student who has talked about being a part of the college sports team that she belongs to. And I asked her about this idea of character development. And her answer was quite interesting because I wasn't talking to her about belonging, but basically she said, I strongly believe that my character was formed through sports. They often told us to be conscious of our position as XYZ university students. I think this is similar to Ningen Keisei. I think this transcends sports. Our coaches wanted us to be responsible in all of our actions. I think my character and humanity were formed by spending day after day with the same group of friends. So to me, it's this sort of social side to character building. You have to belong in order to build it. That seems in Japan. So in this context, discipline and punishment fit in this way. More education and character development and Shido or guidance are often used as justifications for Taibatsu. And in fact, many teachers and coaches aren't punished for using corporal punishment, even though it's against the law because I think they're excused by the government, excused by other authorities because they're trying to morally educate because they're trying to achieve character development and guide these young people. And so Taibatsu is sort of seen as a necessary evil. But that I think is a really contestable idea. And so I'd be curious again in the Q&A to hear people's thoughts on that. So I wanna check on the time. I think I'm probably about time so we can talk maybe about causes and theories and things like that in the Q&A. Should I stop my share here, Helen? Yeah, that's great. Sorry, just bringing myself back. Not at all. I just don't wanna talk too long. I've got a lot of slides, but... Sure, yeah. So just to remind it to everybody that you can type your questions into the Q&A chat which you'll find at the bottom, the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen. So please don't use the chat button. Put them into the Q&A button just so they're all in the same place. So fantastic. Thank you, Erin. It's great to hear actually that you're going to be launching your own podcast series, The Power of Sports. So podcast series is something that really has helped me while I do my sort of obligatory daily lockdown exercise because it's something to listen to and to remind, you know, distract yourself from the fact that you're actually exercising. So do send us the details. And I'm actually delighted to announce, we're gonna be announcing this formally, but I might as well announce it now that the JRC and SOAS have partnered up with a podcast series that's been running here in the UK during the pandemic called Japan Sports Series Podcast. Oh, great. It's run by Noel Thatcher and Mike Salter, who may or may not be on the call actually. And it's a great podcast series focused in on Japan and sports. And they are connected to the handbook of Japan and sport that we are doing, Erin, and you're very kindly giving us the chapter on basketball. So it's all those connections, which is really nice. So if I can give a plug for your podcast, as well as the Japan Sports Podcast, that would be great for anybody who's interested in sports related podcasts. Yes, thank you, Helen. Yeah, so that's really good news. So while we're collecting questions, I don't know if you remember, Erin, but we first came into contact years ago when I was researching into the story of the women's volleyball team that won gold at the Tokyo 64 Olympics. And I was, you know, particularly in that project, looking at Daimatsu, who some of you will know, and the audience was the coach of that women's team. And I came across Erin's work, obviously, on Daimatsu, and it mentioned Daimatsu as well. And obviously, you know, his training range aims came into a lot of criticism at the time because of their intensity and severity. And of course, you know, it's not exactly what you've been talking about, because these were, you know, they were training for the Olympics at the end of the day by the, you know, this team eventually trained for the Olympics. So of course, that's, you expect a certain level of intensity in that training. But nonetheless, they were young, not children, but they were young women, and they were under the care of the company because they were, you know, employees of the company. So there was a lot of criticism of their training, both domestically, but particularly by international observers who had come to watch their training ahead of the Olympics. And certainly, well, it's been a few years since I've been observing high school and, you know, university college sports clubs in Japan, but that's the intensity of training in terms of the number of hours that you have to put in all the time, really was quite surprising to me at the time because it was training almost every day, you know, hours and hours of training. And it seems to me from that video you showed that perhaps that hasn't gone away, perhaps it's even intensified, as you said, because it's gone from classroom to flipping it onto the picture, whatever, the gymnasium. So I just wondered if you could comment, you know, Taibatsu, the definitions that you gave doesn't include shared volume of training hours or length of training hours, but nonetheless, that can be a really physical suffering. Can't it if training just goes on and on and the hours that you need to put in? So I wondered if you could just comment on that. Yeah, absolutely, thank you. Yeah, I mean, the amount of time that is put into these clubs at really any level is what I would think is what an Olympian or future Olympian would put in. I mean, the idea that there's sort of a moment in time where an athlete becomes someone who is training for the Olympics, I think might actually be kind of a flawed one, not only in Japan, but also in the United States. I mean, when you talk to young kids in the United States about why they're training so hard, they could be eight years old and they say, I wanna play in the NBA, right? Or, you know, I wanna play in major league baseball. So there's this notion, I think, that sports are for this, you know, this greater ultimate purpose of some kind. If it's an Olympic sport, it's the Olympics. If it's, you know, a sport that's not played in the Olympics, maybe it's the Super Bowl or whatever it is. And so the training is just, it's intense because there isn't really a notion, at least in the United States and Japan, I should put a caveat in there. There isn't really a notion of playing sports just for fun's sake. And in fact, I've worked with a sports psychologist here in the United States for many years on a program that attempts to do just that, to help young kids play just for play's sake. Because a lot of young people burn out because of this intense training, these long hours of training, and they don't see the point. And that's really a problem, not just for that individual, but also for the society because it can lead to sedentary lifestyles and that can lead to obesity and other health problems. So I think that the fun of sports, which is obviously why I started researching these topics myself, should be re-emphasized in some capacity by all educators, by all sports coaches. But oftentimes it's the players themselves that are very intense in the training, they really want to win. And this is just a phenomenon of sports, you know? Young people don't necessarily have the same kind of intensity or the same kind of motivation in their schoolwork that they have in sports because I think there is something inherent in human beings that we want to get better at things. We want to master things, we want to win and consider ourselves to be the best. And so it also plays into the same thing, but I'm not sure if I answered your question too well, but I think it's a good question. The hours of training is still quite a focus, isn't it, in sports clubs? And I guess this is going a bit off topic, that player welfare is a big thing now in the UK and I'm sure in the USA as well. And particularly for professional sports, the issue of player welfare, including how often they play professionally, how often they train the long-term impact on the body. I just wondered if player welfare was something that was being talked about in Japan as well, whether at the professional leagues or... Not to my knowledge, not as much. I mean, I've written a little bit about this actually with a colleague of mine named Nakazawa Atsushi. He's a professor at Waseda and he knows far more about this than I do, but we've written about it together for some global handbooks on sports welfare and athlete welfare. The sense is that things are changing at a certain level, a policy level. There are certainly a lot of intellectuals in Japan who want to see more player welfare. There's certainly a lot of policy leaders in Japan who want to see more player welfare, but I think the problem is how does that trickle down? One example that I found in my research is with this issue of sports science. Sports science is a way of ensuring that there's not only training, but there's rest and recovery, which is also important part of growing as an athlete. You need to rest, you need to recover, but historically that hasn't really been the way that Japanese athletes have been trained in some of these more intense sports like baseball. And I do, again, I have to make that caveat. I don't think all sports are created equal in Japan. When you talk about this hard training in certain sports, the idea has been to train as much as you possibly can because somebody else is training and you want to train more than them and because more is better than less. And that sports science suggests that that's not always the case and so rest and recovery are important, but what's happened in Japan is that sports science has been introduced and there are many, many institutes for sports science and there's many university professors who are teaching sports science, many coaches at certain levels that are implementing sports science, but it hasn't trickled down to all levels of sport. And so maybe it will, maybe it won't, maybe it's a process that we're watching unfold as we live there, but it's not fully a sports science-based training regime in Japan, I wouldn't say. I'm just gonna go into the chat. By the way, the video trailer, The Man Who Changed Okinawa, can we watch that? Where can we watch that? Let me send the, let me click. Brilliant. Share those links in the chat box with everybody. Brilliant, okay, thank you. Of course, I'll share both of these videos actually. Brilliant, okay. All right, so we have a question here from Peter Cave, the man himself, who you quoted. That's Peter. Who has said, my hair is looking good. That's very kind of you, Peter. That's very generous. He says, reports of Tai Batsu in Japan that I have seen are always about Tai Batsu by men. So can Tai Batsu be regarded as an expression of a certain version of masculinity? Yes, yes, no question, no question, Peter. And let me just finish this link here. Yeah, thank you for sharing those. That's brilliant. Yes, of course. And yeah, thank you very much for the question, Peter. I appreciate it. It's something I've thought about quite a bit, especially since I've been doing more research on women's college basketball in the United States. There is a, you know, I haven't written anything that compares the case of Japan to the US yet, but I hope to someday, just taking a long time to do it the right way. But, because it's sort of comparing apples to oranges. But to your question about masculinity, I definitely think Tai Batsu is a reflection of a certain kind of masculinity that, and in fact, let me share one slide so I can credit one Japanese scholar whose idea this is. Let me just pull back my PowerPoint just a moment, please. Because this will answer your question better than I can, Peter. Pardon me, I'm not too good with Zoom. You'd think I'd be better. We've been locked down for you. You'd think I'd be better. Well, no, but we, you know, still technology, isn't it? It is, it is. Okay, so this is part of the section of the presentation on causes, but I just will skip ahead to, let's see, yeah, this one. So this is, Nakamura has this idea that there's a reliance on Tai Batsu in sports because of a samurai ethos. This idea that, which values modesty. So he says that Japanese are taught to be modest when they play sports, and that Tai Batsu is one means to teach this modesty. And I think this relates to this other issue, which I find really interesting, and I really would love to hear Peter's thoughts on this, maybe others as well, but, you know, Ember and Ember wrote a paper in 2005, I think, where they compared data from all across the world on corporal punishment, and they were trying to find out what were the specific factors that led to a higher likelihood that a country had corporal punishment or not. And one of the things that they said was that there would be an alien currency. Let me put it back one more slide. A power inequality, presence of social stratification, high levels of political hierarchy, polygyny, non-relative help with caretaking of children, and society with high rates of warfare, or societies using an alien currency. These were the factors that they found in their cross-cultural analysis that would predict corporal punishment being more prevalent, I should say. And so the issue that I kind of latched onto with this paper was this issue of a foreign colonizer, because of course Japan is famous for not having been officially colonized during the period of colonialism. But on the other hand, if you think about Article 9 of Japan's post-war constitution, which was written right after World War II, and the intent of it was to prevent Japan from ever waging war like they had during World War II, you might say that Article 9 effectively does the same thing. And maybe there's a notion that some in Japan, particularly men, might feel colonized, and that Taibatsu might be more prevalent as a result. And this is perhaps a stretch in logic on my part to suggest this. So I don't wanna make too much of it, but I would be curious for others' thoughts on this because I think it's very provocative. And so Nakamura's idea is that Taibatsu forms submissive, or excuse me, that there's a lot of Taibatsu because Japan feels like a colonized country. And Senuki kind of says something similar. He says Taibatsu forms submissive personalities that always follow the existing order and never complain. So it creates a certain kind of hierarchy which I think it furthers a sort of samurai masculinity, this idea that there's an order to things, that there should be time and grade, there should be rank, there should be men with power over women. I do think that's a form of masculinity that's probably furthered, but it's probably done so on an unconscious or subconscious level. I don't think anybody's thinking about it consciously. Interesting. Actually, the samurai mention is interesting. I've actually come across the mention of samurai a couple of times in my research on rugby and thinking about saying that rugby is such a masculine sport and you need to be a warrior and you need to be a samurai. So it's interesting the mention that you made of it there. And it is sort of seen as a masculine sport, although apparently women's rugby is the fastest growing sport in the world at the moment. So there you go. Is that right? Interesting. How interesting. Starting at a low base probably, that's why, but it's good news. So we have a couple of questions here from John Miller. So one is, could you comment on the use of humiliation as a tool of control and the strength of the need to avoid humiliation? Interesting question. And his other question is, well, linked to what Peter was asking really, do you have any observations of gender differences in male and female education, training and sports? Quite a big, big... Yes. Well, let me start with the first one. Thank you very much, John, for these questions. They're very, very important questions. You know, I think the issue of humiliation is a really interesting one for me because first of all, there's study, I didn't get to this, but there's studies out there that suggest that actually many people who have experienced corporal punishment in Japan, and I think this is mostly young boys and young men who largely are the recipients of corporal punishment, but many of them come to later appreciate the fact that they were singled out for it. And this was one of the more vexing issues that I dealt with in the book. And part of the reason why I ended up going to use Michelle Foucault's theory of power to try to understand why, which, you know, we can get into later if anybody's interested, but I think the issue of humiliation sort of depends upon, it presupposes the notion that these young players are humiliated. And I certainly think in some cases, they are. And especially if it's the case that the educator is using corporal punishment out of rage or anger, and it's not being used in sort of a systematic way, I absolutely think there's humiliation there, even if they maybe aren't able to admit it. But then the question becomes in these surveys that are done by Japanese sociologists, like Hachido E.Y., is the study I'm thinking of in my head right now. But he did a study, the question becomes, would people admit that they were humiliated on these surveys? I don't know, that's a hard question to answer. But it doesn't appear to be the case that these surveys suggest that people feel humiliated. In fact, the majority of respondents are saying that they think that this corporal punishment was beneficial to them, that they grew from it. And again, this was just a vexing finding. When I read that paper, I was very perplexed. It took me a long time to figure out what that meant. So that's part of the theory chapters explaining that issue. And as part of that, is maybe being humiliated in front of others so that reinforces the message to everybody, not just the person who's getting the time to be humiliated personally. Right, but that's the interesting thing because the Taibatsu is actually singling out an individual most of the time. And that's different from what they call rentisekinin, which is collective responsibility. And rentisekinin is this, and in the video I shared on YouTube, the interview video, there's some talk of rentisekinin and the interviewee talks about how he hated it. And that was my experience too. People don't like to have to run because somebody else made a mistake. But Taibatsu is a little different because they feel like they're being singled out. And in a culture where people aren't singled out as much as they are here in the United States, I don't think it's always considered humiliation. Sometimes it is, right? I think it really does depend on the case and the individuals involved. And then in terms of gender differences, yeah, definitely in the chapter on context in my book, there's quite a lot of data that suggests that most corporal punishment is performed by male educators, sports coaches, teachers on male students and players. It's not involving young women and girls. And so I do think there's a gender aspect to this, but certainly, and now I can't, oh, you've clicked answer. Oh, sorry. I clicked on it. It's my first time doing this, so I don't know where to go. Sorry, I clicked saying we'd answered it before you'd completed your answer. Sorry, but it was just asking. But I was just gonna add one part about the training to John's question. Because I think if we're not talking about tie-bots, but we're talking about training in general, one of the things that I was really fascinated with when I did my fieldwork with the University Basketball Club, which I was watching both the men and the women, and the intensity of the training was no different between them. I mean, we actually just had something here in the United States become a big public controversy over this, and I think I'm glad it did because the NCAA didn't provide the same kind of workout facilities for the women's basketball tournament participants that they did for the men. And it's all over social media right now about how there's just this assumption that young women who play sports aren't as serious as young men. And my research totally flies in the face of that. It's just not the case in Japan. I don't think it's the case here in the United States either. And I suspect that kind of intensity is something that's driven again by the high stakes of sports and the desire to master your craft. So the use of physical punishment, I think interestingly is very gendered, but I don't think the training necessarily is these days. That's kind of how I'd answer that second question. Well, I mean, I remember when I was researching Daimatsu in the 1960s and that women's volleyball team. Daimatsu, I mean, I know it's the 60s and it was they were training for the Olympics, but he was very sort of, you know, it doesn't matter that you're female, you're gonna be training this, you know, you're gonna be training hard. That's right, because nationalism was what that was all about, right? Yeah. There was this desire to show off to the world how great Japan was. Yeah. And that particular team and, you know, they did end up doing that for many Japanese people, particularly because of, you know, Kaminaga losing in the final, the heavyweight judo final to Kisuke-san. Yeah, so that was a moment where nationalism was sort of validated in sports. And I think ever since, you know, sports have contained to be a very important realm for the expression of Japanese nationalism on an international stage. So... Well, that kind of leads into our next question from Fabio, Fabio Soas' colleague. He's apologizing for coming in late, may have missed a reference, although I don't think he has. He's asking about the martial arts aspect of this kind of training. So wondering where the idea of Sashin, whether it comes out of the Bakumatsu period, where in the martial arts techniques were replaced by drills that were meant to foster willpower. So it's something very obvious in Kindle, for example. Yes. So yeah, asking about that. Yeah, that's a fantastic question, Fabio. Thank you for asking it. You know, I'm no expert on the martial arts. Let me just make that caveat. I've never done them. I don't claim to have much knowledge of the martial arts, but from what I understand, based on what others have researched, the martial arts ideology has been incorporated into sports training in Japan in certain sports. Again, we're talking about these sports where masculinity and hierarchy are large cultural values. And so sports like baseball and perhaps rugby, I don't know, I haven't seen it quite as much in basketball, in my research in basketball. But Sashin is an ideal, is an idea that, you know, even if your body isn't strong enough, your will can overcome. And one of the themes that I'm exploring, I've explored a little bit in a paper I wrote a few years ago, but I'm further exploring in this new book about basketball in Japan, is this idea of, you know, the body, mind and spirit in sports. And in basketball, you know, part of the problem has been that the height is 10 feet tall and Japanese players don't grow to the same heights as players from other countries. And so just when they step on the floor, they're already at a physical height disadvantage. It's talked about a lot, isn't it? Yeah. And it is talked about a lot to the point where this expression, retokan is used, which means like a sense of inferiority. And I think that the flip side of that is there's a lot of rhetoric in Japanese basketball about how they can overcome this feeling of inferiority and they can succeed in basketball if they just train properly. And if they train not only the body, but also the mind and the spirit at the same time. So I think sashing is a big part of this. And, but, you know, but whether it's the exact kind of sashing as was expressed in the martial arts in the pre-modern period, I cannot say. I think, you know, somebody like Professor Sogala Tsunayo at Waseda, he would probably be somebody to ask about that. I'm sure Professor Cave could answer that too, but I don't know the answer to that question. I mentioned the handbook of sport in Japan that we've got coming out and which you're doing about basketball chapter four, thank you, but there's a companion handbook coming out separately on martial arts actually, just focusing on martial arts. So eventually that will provide a nice resource. So I'm sure they'll be talking about these types of things in that one. We don't have to worry ourselves in our book, Martial Arts, thankfully, because none of us experts. Another question here from John Miller. Did Tai Batsu have a strong role in forming the attitude the Japanese military had towards the treatment of prisoners of war? Interesting. Yeah, John, another great question. I would have to say that like the last question, I don't think I'm qualified to answer that, but I will say that Tai Batsu was used by all accounts pretty prevalently during the war among Japanese soldiers within the Japanese Imperial Army. And then later after the war, there's research by a professor in Japan called Mori Kawasada, and he found that a lot of the former soldiers from the war would then become physical education teachers and then sometimes would become principals of schools and they would be the ones to be called Tai Batsu Killshi or physical punishment or corporal punishment teachers. And so I think that the militarism that sort of stayed in Japanese society in the post-war period was reflected in the ideas and the actions of some of these teachers. But as far as how that led or if it led to the treatment of prisoners of war, I really can't say. I've not seen anything directly on that, but that doesn't mean anything. There could be something out there. Those military connections are really interesting. And again, coming back to Daimatsu, the coach of that, he had been a soldier in the war, obviously. He was that generation and obviously impacted by his experience of being a soldier and he often used the word konjou, which you need a fighting spirit, but I guess it often gets translated again like you said, as grit or guts or willpower. But he sort of, that arose out of his wartime experience, that attitude to why you must endure the heavy training sessions. Yeah, and I think konjou, I mean, it's a difficult word to translate, but fighting spirit does make the most sense to me. And I do think it is related to militarism, undoubtedly. Good, I'm glad you said that because that's how I translated it as. Yeah, well, you know, I mean, I'm no expert on the term, but that's how I think of it. Yeah. Another one from Peter K. here. How common are reports of something similar to Daimatsu in school or college sports in the US? I'm wondering to what extent if it all intents competitive sports in itself tends to lead to Daimatsu? For example, one recent report in the ASAHI newspaper on Daimatsu was about the British National Gymnastics team. Yes, Peter, thank you for that question again. I absolutely think it's a function of the intensity of these sports training and competitions because it isn't something we see only in Japan. And one of the things that I take, you know, I was very careful in my book to say is that this isn't a Japanese phenomenon. This is not something only unique to Japan. And, you know, in the United States, Taibatsu or Taibatsu, corporal punishment is very prevalent in the South, particularly in these states that where football is king, we call it, we say football is king and they have big college football programs. Very, you know, everybody goes to the football games, probably more go to the football games than they go to church. Football is everything in the South and physical punishment in various forms, whether it be, you know, running or, you know, actual abuse by coaches is I think more common than you would think. And so the question, of course, that you're asking is, is it related to these intensity and the high stakes? I absolutely think it is. And one of the things that I'm trying to do in my career is to remind people of why sports are so popular in the first place. Sometimes we forget. Sports become, they were initially about play, right? When we're kids, we just play. We just have fun doing them. We just kick in the ball around. I've got two more boys and they just love playing soccer or just kicking the ball around. They're very cute, by the way, that photo you shared. Thank you. I'll give all credit to my wife. But then they get, the sports get institutionalized and sports become adult directed and often parents are living vicariously through their children as well. And so I think that can lead to a level of intensity that it's debatable whether it's necessary. I think if a student or the player is very interested in that intensity and wants to master their craft and if that student or player is driving that intense training, that's one thing. But if it's being driven by the adults, the coaches, the teachers, the parents, then I think it's a different thing entirely, yeah. And a question here, sorry if I pronounced your name wrong, Sarkhan. Foucault's discourse on punishment, especially when it comes to the penitentiary institutions, discusses how individuals are subjected to disciplinary measures to correct deviant behavior. However, the new theories in critical penology are taking it to another realm. For instance, Feely and Simon propose that the new discourse on punishment in prison settings labeled as actuarial justice, sorry, is about managing crime and criminals instead of rehabilitating a deviant. So do you observe any similarities in educational institutions? Foucault, that's a big question as well. That is a big question and Sarkhan, I'm not sure I can answer it in this form. Could you tell me a little bit more about what you mean by actuarial justice? It's not something I've come across. Yeah, maybe if you could type a bit more into the chat, we'll come back to that. That'd be great, yeah. Yeah. John Miller adds to, he just says, on a lighter note, after his military POW question, on a lighter note, have you heard the quote, the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eaton, attributed to your friend? Yes, I have heard it's attributed, but I've also heard that it's false. It's a false attribution. I don't have any evidence one way or the other, but I've heard both. But I think the notion is one that is still a common notion, whether this was actually said by the Duke of Wellington or not, it's certainly a notion that's very commonplace here in the United States. People believe here, particularly, again, to go back to Peter's question about gender, particularly men, believe that battles in all forms, real or metaphorical, will be won through training and particularly training in sports. So there's a sports talk radio personality here where I live in the San Francisco Bay Area who says sports doesn't build character, it reveals character. And this is an idea that I think is very, very common here in the United States. And I imagine it's probably common in Britain and I know it's common in Japan. Yeah, interesting. And Peter has also added a comment. Incidentally, as a comment, in the British newspaper reports about the gymnastics complaint, the term used was physical abuse, which could perhaps be an alternative translation of tie-butts, too. Yeah, let me share something that I wanted to give to you. Yeah, please do, yeah. I talked a lot about this. I hopefully Sakana's typing, I don't know if he is, but. Yeah, so Peter, thank you for that one as well. One of the things I wanted to note here was this idea that, sorry for it going so fast, it does appear that the language is changing in Japan. And I'd be curious to hear whether you agree with that, whether you also think it's changing Helen and Peter, but some colleagues are telling me that people aren't using tie-butts anymore because they understand how imprecise its meaning is and instead they are, like you said, Peter, using terms like abuse or gyakutai and violence or bodryoku or harasmento as well. And I did some research on this for my book where I was just looking at some newspaper databases to try to see whether these terms were changing. And it does appear that, since about the turn of the century, people are using other terms. But it's not, this isn't the best science in the world to know exactly what's happening, but I do think that people are starting to realize, and maybe with my book coming out in Japanese, that'll remind people of how imprecise the term tie-buttsu is. But your perspective is made very clear when you say gyakutai. Your perspective is made very clear when you use the word bodryoku. When you use the word tie-buttsu, it's not made as clear. There have been people in Japan who've said tie-buttsu is a good thing. And you can sort of get away with that in Japan in some circles, not all the time, but in terms of saying abuse is a good thing. I don't think anybody in Japan would say that, right? So the famous expression, of course, was totesukahiroshi, who said tie-buttsu is education. And that is a very controversial statement among many people in Japan, but in the circles that totesukah was running in, it wasn't controversial at all. It was thought to be wisdom. So there's a real big debate over this issue. And I think that the language we use, or that we use in the West, but also the Japanese use in Japan, is indicative of that debate to some degree. Okay, I'll stop sharing this. Interesting. Unfortunately, we don't have a follow-up from Akana, so. Maybe he can email me or something. Yeah, well, we're curious to learn more. No, here we go, here we go. So he's been typing away. So Fili and Simon argue that the logic of actual, I can't even say that, actual, can you say that? How do you say it? I don't know, I've never seen this before. The logicals actual realism, calculate, anyway, he's put an explanation. Calculation of risks, cost-benefit analysis, economic efficiency has penetrated the prison systems of the West in a sense. The success of the prison is not dependent the rates of risk-tidivism, but managing criminals by categorizing them according to the risks they impose, life-sentenced electron, oh, still complicated. I think I get the gist. I think I get the gist. Go ahead, go ahead. I'm glad you're getting this question. No, I actually would rather somebody else answer it because I don't have a good answer. But what I'll say is that I have not seen that. That's the simplest. I have not seen that there's any kind of system in Japan that follows this particular model. And I do think that that's not surprising if I'm right. You know, my observations aren't to be on end all, but if I'm right that this isn't being used in Japan, I don't think it's that shocking because of course criminals who are sentenced to prison are considered to be in a different category than students. And so while there is some similarity in terms of being forced to go into a school and being forced to go into a prison, the reasons for being forced to do both of those things are very different. So I think it's very important when we look at corporal punishment to be clear on the realm that we're looking at because deviance and deviant behavior really does depend on the context. Well, we can certainly, so I can't put you in touch with, if you can't find Aaron, Google him, if you can't find him, just get in touch with us and we can put you in touch if you'd like to continue. Clearly this is an area of young capitalism that we're not quite, can't quite get to grips with. Oh, and one thing I would say that Sarcombe might take a look at is Botsman's book. Forget the first name Botsman's book, but B-O-T-S-M-A-N on corporal punishment and penal realms, that might be an interesting book for you if you haven't read it already. Great. I'm just gonna take one final question because I actually have to whip into another seminar at 6.30. Heather Jockins, sorry, it's alumni, Japanese MA, welcome Heather, great talk and one I'm interested in is a fan of Sumo, which has even of late had controversy surrounding hazing and the use of corporal punishment in the sport because it's a sport where a person can go on to take on the traditional, where a person can go on to take on the traditional life in the professional sport from a young age, especially since the Japanese Sumo Association is under-mexed. Have these definitions of TaiBatsu crossed over with consideration to this kind of murky area? Let me try to understand the question. Yeah, well, Sumo's a very different sport, isn't it? Because you immerse yourself, you become a, you can go into the stables, don't you? And you become a Sumo, but learning to be a Sumo, you have to do a lot of, let's face it, dirty work to begin with, don't you? But there's not so many Sumos. Well, definitely, I actually, yeah, no question. I mean, I actually start the book with three different stories of TaiBatsu, and one of them is the story of Toki Taizan. So if you get a chance, Heather, please read that section of the book because Toki Taizan was a tragic story of a young Sumo wrestler who was hazed and beaten and to the point of death. And we're not talking ancient history here. This wasn't many years ago. And so there's definitely overlap in some of these ideas in terms of physical training and physical punishment, arguably physical abuse. There's definitely some overlap between these other sports that I've been talking about today and Sumo. But I think that it's tough for me to, I'm trying to understand the question itself because it's a sport of a person who's going to, these definitions of TaiBatsu, Carl, so I can't actually see the whole question. Can you read it one more time? So I think she's saying that because you can sort of start your training or life as a very young age, and it comes under mixed as well. So I guess she's asking whether it's a gray area, whether- Yeah, I mean, in the Toki Taizan case, it was a gray area. The question of whether the incidents that took place, he was beaten with beer bottles, I remember. And the question was, was this TaiBatsu or not? Because it took place between Sumo wrestlers, the senior members of a stable were apparently the ones that inflicted the abuse that led to his death. And so I do think that that question of whether it's TaiBatsu or not was considered to be the important question among Japanese people. So yes, I do think that the definitional murkiness, as you say, is common in Sumo too. And it's the national sport, right? It's the Koky. So there's a lot at stake there too, even if it might not be a world baseball championship or a world baseball classic championship, or maybe it's not the Olympic Games or Olympic medal. Sumo wrestlers ultimately are going up against non-Japanese sumo wrestlers. So there's nationalism involved there too, the stakes are very high there too. Yeah, there is added, we got it. She didn't mean the question to come out with. Okay, I'm sorry. Thank you. I was gonna say, if you're not satisfied, we could put you in touch with each other, but it sounds like you were satisfied. So thank you for the question. I'm happy to answer anyone's questions. Thank you, to the best of my ability. Yeah, that's great. So thanks everybody for your questions. And thanks to Aaron for a fantastic end to our seminar series this term. As I said, we don't have any more planned at the moment, but we might do some more ad hoc ones over the summer term, especially if we're still sort of restricted in our movements going forward. It's nice to continue some of these. So do look out for them, we will advertise them. And yeah, we look forward to your podcast series and please do listen into the Japan Sports Stories podcast if you get a moment and enjoy Japanese sport. And yeah, Aaron, brilliant. Can we zoom in again with you and see how your bed's developed in a few more months or? Sure, yeah, why not? Might be off screen by then. But I also, if I may also just say hello to Michelle Kerriger. I see her, my old jet friend. It's been a long time. Thank you for coming, Michelle. It's all right. I'm just flipping through the names to see if I knew anybody else. Brilliant, well done. Okay, that's great. Well, thanks to everybody for coming along. And thanks particularly to those who asked questions. And it's brilliant to see you, Aaron. Next time we'll get you to London. And yep, she's replied there. He's actually pretty. Next time we'll get you to London and we'll be able to go out. Hopefully the pubs will be opening again in the not too distant future. We'll take you out. I can't tell you how much I look forward to that. That would be great. I can't tell you how much we're all looking forward to that. I'm sure, I'm sure. Okay, thanks very much everybody. Thank you. And thanks, Aaron. It's brilliant. Go back to those lovely boys. I will. Thank you all. Have a nice day everybody. Goodnight.