Office hour chat with a professor :
This door leads to the world!
Tokorozawa Campus Building No.100 the seventh floor
Professor in the Faculty of Sports Science
Professor Tsuneo Sogawa (Faculty of Sports Science)’s office

This is the Dragon’s Head. When actually attached to the bow of a ship, it is painted in vivid colors.

Martial arts “Mukarekare”of Bariaga people, aboriginal inhabitants of Bali. If blood is shed, it is offered to the God Shiva.

A bladder ball. It is as big as a rugby ball.

A board game. Put nuts in the holes one by one, and you win them all if the last hole has an odd number.

“Zuruharne (“house of power”), a place where people devote themselves to training while reciting the Koran, survives in Iran to this day. This is a training set which is used there.

It is a big wood-carved dragon’s head that stands out, which is outside the door when Professor Sogawa is in the room and inside the door when he is out. It is an ornament made in China, which is attached to the tip of a ship for race. But actually the dragon’s head is unfinished. “I knocked it over several times, so its beard fell off. Some of the fangs are missing, I think”, said Professor Sogawa, whose suits pants with suspenders is his trademark, stroking the dragon’s head. His specialty is Sports Anthropology, especially the ethnic sports peculiar to the various peoples of the world. There are many items in his collection which came from all over the world. One unique example is a ball made of an ox's bladder, which has been a popular item for centuries in the West. If you blow it up, it bounces quite well, and it can be strengthened by covering it with leather. This is the origin of today’s rugby ball.

“Although we tend to associate the word “sports” with baseball or soccer, it originally means “to be refreshed” or “to play”. Therefore board games are also one kind of sports,” Professor Sogawa said, showing us a game called “Mankara” in Africa. It is a competition between two people, and the one who takes all the nuts of the other is the winner. Even if we don’t have a board, we can play it anywhere if we dig a hole. A seal ball made by the Inuit, aboriginal inhabitants of Canada, still has something of an animal smell. In the Spanish game “Pelota”, a ball is hit back and forth by players who have curved rattan implements on their arms. A player resembles a praying mantis. “They used to play with bare hands and a hard ball. They apparently felt it was manly to endure the pain.” “Toratitori” in Mexico is a ball game in which we hit the ball with our hips. The ball is usually heavy and made of rubber. If the game goes well, it can be artistic. In Professor Sogawa's office, there are too many games to list.

“I’d like students to experience culture shock. Understanding another culture leads to understanding our own culture. That is, we can see our culture from a new point of view, if we know there are different customs involving food, clothing and shelter.” Professor Sogawa’s gentle voice is sonorous in his office, where a fascinating world waits to be discovered.