BREIF REPORT ON OVERSEAS SPORT

A BRIEF REPORT ON THE CURRENT JAPANESE SPORT EVENT

‘BO-TAOSHI’

By: Marianne Mavrikios

Bo-Taoshi is a very traditional Japanese sport of ‘pole pull-down’. It is exceedingly popular around Asia and is very similar to a game known in America as King of the Hill, and capture the flag with a mix of rugby, however the Bo-Taoshi game is known to be extremely competitive. In fact many people in Japan, and around Asia are trying to get the Bo-Taoshi game into the summer Olympics as an event.

The word Bo-Taoshi itself actually means, "bring down the pole" which is essentially the aim of the game.

How it is played:

In the game there are two teams of seventy-five men on each side of a field wearing different colored uniforms. One team (the attackers) is on one side of the field ready to charge at the other team (the defenders) who are on the other side of the field protecting their man on the 15-foot high telephone pole from toppling over. The goal of the game is for the chargers/attackers also known as the offense tries to get the other teams man off of the telephone pole and replace it with one of their own men, or simply knock down the pole for an instant win. The attackers do this by any means possible. The main strategy is generally using their own teammates as trampolines to get onto the pole, and depicting from the image below they will do whatever it takes (no mercy). The game has a number of set positions and formations (e.g. the man at the top of the pole is known as the “ninja”), but essentially Bo-Taoshi seems to quickly devolve into a giant scrum where basically ‘kicking’ another person in the face is not only acceptable but also encouraged.

Bo-Taoshi is an intense, brutal sport that was originally created by the Japanese military defense academy in their free time- but now largely played amongst school children as the adults can get a little too ‘insane’ leaving very few uninjured.

It’s an obscure sport and may come across as somewhat strange to the standard Aussie, nonetheless this is understood to be an incredible event within the Japanese culture.

“Bo-Taoshi makes sense to the Japanese, and that’s all that counts" – Richmond Bo-Taoshi premier league.