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Feigning on the pitch, far off Broadway

Italy's Francesco Totti getting sent off during World Cup 2002

It’s things like this that bring home just how hard it is for me to get into that “world’s sport” football, or as we call it back home (and in Japan), soccer: England captain David Beckham has admitted that he got a penalty on purpose so that he would miss his next game, a World Cup qualifier with Azerbaijan. Beckham, who knew he was going to miss the game anyway on account of a rib injury (and little matter, as Azerbaijan hardly posed a threat to England, though I did find myself hoping for an upset just to throw a spanner in the works), rather than having the threat of a one-game suspension in a tougher World Cup qualifiying contest hanging over his head, basically got the suspension “out of the way” with his deliberate penalty (he already was sitting on one yellow card and two yellows result in a one-game suspension).

I suppose we should at least commend Sir Beckham for coming forward with his admission, and to be fair he does seem to be taking a bit of heat for it, notably from England football hero Geoff Hurst, who went so far as to imply that Beckham should be stripped of his captaincy. But what got me was a poll on BBC’s web site that showed that out of 80,598 respondents (at time of writing), a full 61% of them thought that Beckham’s sin was admitting to the intentional foul. Indeed, only 18% of respondents actually think that getting deliberately booked was wrong (21% said Beckham did nothing wrong at all).

Granted, as the BBC elegantly but cryptically disclaims, “Results are indicative and may not reflect public opinion,” and no one would try to claim the poll was scientific, but what I’m wondering is if the poll indicates that England fans desperately want their team to win any way they can, or if this kind of foul play is treated as an accepted part of the game, sort of an open secret that Beckham foolishly blew further open.

You see, if there’s one thing about the sport that bugs me to no end, and that really makes it difficult for me to fully enjoy, it’s all the diving, you know the feigning of penalties and the laughable sight of grown athletes pretending to writhe in pain after suffering the equivalent of a grade-school wedgie. (Okay, so the fact that sponsors’ logos are ten times bigger than team logos on uniforms, and the loosy-goosy way of time keeping, also bug the hell out of me, but that I can accept as part of the sport’s makeup, just like how the varying ballpark dimensions in American baseball seem part of the character of the game).

Now I can hardly be accused of subscribing to the “real men don’t eat quiche” school of thought (hell, I’m practically a vegetarian and you know what they say about vegetarians), but seeing superstar athletes crying wolf or pounding the ground in agony after getting their pinkie toe stepped on — followed by the obligatory stretcher trip to the sidelines and the inevitable sprint back to the playing pitch two seconds later — my latent American machismo can’t help but kick into overdrive and I start to wonder if those are real men out there or drama queens gone missing from a Shakespeare production.

(In fairness, American football, the sport that shares a name with Association football but little else — no doubt to the rueful consternation of most fans of the latter — is not immune to diving, with punters being the usual culprit, trying to draw “roughing” penalties. I hope the irony of players called punters — incidentally only one of two positions in American football that actually put foot to ball — being inveterate divers is not lost on my British readers. Anyway, I’ve always hated punters, divers all of them, and wusses who can’t tackle either.)

It’s not like I don’t want to enjoy football/soccer. Growing up in seemingly the only part of the world that doesn’t take it seriously I always felt I was missing something. And while as a teen we had the North American Soccer League, and I guess I can claim some smidgen of football/soccer “cred” for having seen the great Pele play live when I was 11 (for the New York Cosmos, at Aloha Stadium in Hawaii), it seemed pretty clear that that wasn’t what all the fuss was about. But now that I get my fair share of access to world football, the game is on the whole more frustrating than thrilling, and indeed I can’t take it seriously. Not in the same way that I can’t take the WWF seriously, mind you, just that I will never be able to get past the feigning and flopping or accept it as “part of the game.”

Thinking on the 2002 World Cup, which was played (or co-played) in Japan, and which I watched nightly, the moment I still remember above all others, the moment that gave me the biggest thrill, was seeing Italian captain Francesco Totti — poster boy for whiny prima donna football players everywhere — sent off for diving against South Korea (later it was determined that there was contact in the play in question though I still contend Totti flopped). Rather a waste of fan support I know, but such is my disappointment with the sport that I end up decrying or praising referree calls rather than getting upset about the blown goal opportunities or cheering the spectacular goal. Try as I might, rather than viewing these shenanigans — oh, let’s just call a spade a spade, this cheating — as a distraction like I do similar antics in say, NBA basketball, I see them not as part of the game, but as the game.

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The push pull of the circle

'kurumaza' kanji

In Japanese, sitting in a circle is called kurumaza, literally, “wheel seating.” A kurumaza formation can put others off, since all they see of the people forming the circle is their backs, which seems to be saying, “The rest of you are outsiders.” To be sure, when the kurumaza is formed on the ground outdoors, a stranger standing on the outside of the circle can also see the faces of those on the far side. But the attention of those faces is riveted on the others in the circle. The stranger can be standing as little as a meter away from the ring, and still the group will pay virtually no attention. This obliviousness to others can easily be observed, for example, in the tightly packed groups of revelers that fill Ueno Park in Tokyo for flower-viewing parties under the trees during the cherry blossom season.

The above was taken from Sitting in a Circle: Thoughts on the Japanese Group Mentality, a lecture given a few years ago by Japanese poet and critic Makoto Ooka, at the Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture at Columbia University (as part of the Soshitsu Sen Distinguished Lectures on Japanese Culture).

Ooka uses the Japanese word kurumaza (sitting in a circle) as the basis for a fascinating look at the oft-discussed “group” culture of Japan, seen not only in its systems (political, corporate) nor its cultural manifestations (karaoke, hanami), but also in its language and poetry. Ooka is most concerned with, to quote him, “how the traditional kurumaza society and the desire for solitude interact within the spirit of the poet….”

I was particularly struck by this paragraph of “poetic” etymology:

At one time I became aware of and took an interest in the major role the words au (to meet, to come together, to be in accord, to fit) and its derivative awasu (to bring together, to bring into accord) play in the Japanese language. What brought my attention to this was an observation that the Japanese language scholar Ono Susumu made during a round-table discussion in which we both took part. Ono pointed out that osafu, an old form of the verb osaeru (to restrain, to hold down), was formed as a compound of the verbs osu (to push) and afu, and earlier form of au. He gives a more precise explanation of the word in his laborious work Iwanami kogo jiten (Iwanami Dictionary of Classical Japanese): “To continue pushing, adjusting one’s force to that of the other party so as not to move the other party.” In other words, this single word—which is still in everyday use—has woven into it the awareness of a relationship in which the performer of the action senses the other person’s force and increases or decreases the amount of force applied so as to match it.

But read the whole thing. Rest assured, those tired old proverbial nails, you know the kind that stick up only to get hammered down, which are de rigueur in most articles about Japan and its group culture, aren’t mentioned.