Читать книгу Traditions. Essays on the Japanese Martial Arts and Ways онлайн

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So, do you see why there were no “winners” in kachinuki competition as we usually think of them? Yes, you may have beaten contestant G, but you were only able to do it after he’d fought and beaten contestants C, D, E, and F, for example. This system made categories like winners and losers mostly meaningless. Egos bloated by championships never had a chance to blossom. Trophies, if given at all, were usually awarded to the dojo which had collectively won the most matches or more likely, to those competitors who showed the best (though not always the winning) spirit.

I do not wish to paint a rosy “everyone just got together and had fun” picture of kachinuki shiai. Contestants fought. Hard. It was my experience that ten minutes after the medals were given out everyone had already forgotten who had received them, true. But we knew who had demonstrated the best technique, who we wanted to face the next time. We also remembered the techniques we saw, the wonderful displays of courage and determination, and the comradeship of the whole event.