In the month of October Japan celebrates “Sports Day†which is the anniversary of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and a holiday to inspire exercise for all. Around this time, schools all over the country hold Sports Festivals where they take part in a variety of physical activities from dancing to relay races.
In the city of Kobe alone, 51 gymnastic formation-related injuries occurred between January to August of this year, and in the past three years 123 related fractures have been reported. This may lead you to believe that the entire city is being run by the mayor from Jaws who is going to ignore the particular problem until it swims up and bites him in the butt, but actually he has been an active opponent of the sport.
On 2 August, Mayor Kizo Hisamoto requested that the Kobe Board of Education suspend all mandatory gymnastic formations. However, his pleas appeared to have fallen on deaf ears so he addressed the board as well as teachers and principals directly via Twitter after oddly slipping in a humblebrag about his trip to England.
