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Today, my daughter’s elementary school sports day was forcibly held despite a light rain. Thanks to good luck in the drawing (what a thing to use one’s luck on…), I got the 2nd spot in the whole school for seating and was able to take a front-row seat directly in front. It was under a cherry tree, so I was glad that I was less exposed to the rain.

It is a private elementary school, and my daughter’s school is the same one that I attended. So there are teachers we have in common, and some of my classmates come as well. Today, I met 3 classmates during the alumni parents’ tug-of-war competition. By the way, I pulled from the front row for the Plum Group, and today I was quite enlightened about the theory of tug-of-war.


To begin with, the Plum Group had few people. It had about 10 fewer people than the others, so we had only just managed to gather enough participants. It looked weak by any measure, but it won. There were 3 points to note.

  1. Start pulling immediately in time with the starting signal. If you are late, you lose.
  2. From the start, instead of pulling, stand up vertically and fall backward as though looking at the sky. Apparently, pulling from a low position does not allow much force to be applied.
  3. Call out and pull together in short intervals.

Certainly, an adult probably weighs around 60 kg. Falling backward as though looking at the sky means using that body weight to the fullest through the principle of leverage, with the heels as the fulcrum. It certainly seems stronger than the force of pulling with one’s hands. Also, when trying to pull in a low posture, the angle of the feet to the ground becomes shallow, and it does not seem possible to obtain enough friction. So it seems better to stand upright and pull.

The internet is convenient: I found a page that explains this theoretically. It made me nod in agreement. What we did today was close to this.

However, theory always has fewer parameters than practice. For practical discussion, the page of the Ota Tug-of-War Research Institute is useful. But that is for people who are serious about it; for a parents’ tug-of-war at a sports day, it still seems better to follow the basic theory.

By the way, the reason I pulled in the front row was not, of course, that I volunteered to go there. While I was lined up farther back, an unfamiliar mother came to recruit people for the front row, said, “Ah, someone who looks like Yon-sama,” and took me to the front. Hmm, what was that about…?

Changing the subject, something I thought while watching the sports day today: many of the boys and girls seemed to be overweight. Seeing boys whose chests were jiggling made me wonder what to make of it all. Is this, after all, an age of plenty?

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