Daibutsu, Kamakura

Daibutsu, Kamakura
Daibutsu in Kamakura, June 2010. There were thousands of school kids visiting that day. It was still great fun.

Friday, June 19, 2009

Japanese Warlord Plays Kickball

Oda Nobunaga, one of the most feared and powerful warlords in Japanese history, liked a good game of kickball. "Kickball?" you say. "Did it even exist 450 years ago?" Well, apparently it did.

According to the book, Japonius Tyrannus, kickball had been an aristocratic pastime since the late Heian period (794-1185) and surprisingly Nobunaga, a passionate hunter and sumo fan, displayed an interest in this rather static and ceremonial sport.

Nobunaga actively involved himself with the court such as in 1575 when he organised a match between leading nobles at the grounds of the temple Shokokuji. Nobunaga used these matches as well as the Tea Ceremony to establish or strengthen political bonds, or to associate with people from outside the warrior class: with merchants in the case of tea, and with nobles in the case of kickball.

The kickball matches also allowed Nobunaga to famliarize himself with the various court nobles. At the time, one of the players, Asukai Masanori (1520-94), served as Crown Prince Sanehito's special envoy to Nobunaga. The Asukai family had earned a dominant position as 'masters of kickball' in the Muromachi period (1336 to 1573), thanks to the sponsorship of successive emperors and the Ashikaga shoguns. Nobunaga continued this shogunal sponsorship of the Asukai, even calling himself Masanori's 'kickball pupil' on one occasion.

I think it would have been pretty cool to have played kickball with the great warlord Nobunaga. I would be careful to always let him win of course.

8 comments:

  1. hurry and invent time travel, I'd ggive almost anything to go back in the past and see that

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  2. That would be cool. I wonder what they wore while playing?

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  3. I'm guessing Hakama.... Either that or spandex...

    Hey have you ever read Eiji Yoshikawa's "Taiko" It is historical fiction about Hideyoshi Toyotomi. I'm at page 40 with 890 to go. It's fairly good. You may like it.

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  4. I wonder if the rules were the same back then? The kids at my school call it "kickbase".

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  5. Kickbase? I had not heard that one before. I knew as kickball back in school also.

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  6. very interesting intersection of sports and politics. it reminds me of obama and basketball, how playing ball has become an important venue for politicking.

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  7. Good analogy. I think today the top sport for politicking and getting deals done is golf. Golf is todays equivalent to Kickball in ancient Japan.

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