国士舘大学新体操部

■Expedition to Finland 2018: Day Seven / Final Day

Today is the last day of the Gymnaestrada. The closing ceremony will be held at a stadium. We finished all our performances yesterday, so today we will enjoy the ceremony as part of the audience. There were a lot of people outside the stadium since many booths were set up there. While we were walking around and checking out these booths, many people noticed us and told us “I loved your performance!”, “You are the best ever!!“ and so on. We were pleasantly surprised by such enthusiastic responses from them.

The ceremony will start at 13:30. This time, we are looking forward to enjoying the show in a relaxed way with the rest of the audience.

When the ceremony started, so many gymnasts showed their performances one after another using the entire stadium area. We could enjoy different kinds of performances: artistic and rhythmic gymnastics, dances for young and elderly people, exercises for parents and children, etc. It was so wonderful that we could strongly feel the joy of sharing the moment with everybody in the stadium, even though we were specialized in different types of gymnastics.

Gymnastics is “taiso (体操）” in the Japanese language, which literally means “manipulating the body”.

So we could say that a part of the purpose of gymnastics is manipulating the body freely to improve physical function and expressiveness. The Gymnaestrada is an event to “enjoy” gymnastics. On the other hand, Rhythmic Gymnastics is a competitive sport. I was wondering why so many people here admire our Men’s RG routine even though it was made not for the viewer’s pleasure, but for winning a competition.

What came to my mind was “The human being is an animal who is constantly evolving with a strong will to improve itself”. Even if people just enjoy gymnastics for personal pleasure, at the same time they might be curious to know where the sport will lead them. Some just want to enjoy what they do, and others want to explore their own physical potential. I thought this kind of dual nature is something we need for the development of any sport.

We admire people who have achieved what we think we would never be able to achieve. I thought that the people in Finland welcomed us so warmly because they found some evolutionary form of gymnastics in our performance.

A sport has to have both elements of “pleasure sport” and “competitive sport” for its development. During this expedition, we learned how to maintain a balance between these two extremes.

Men’s RG is still developing in Japan. We need both young and seasoned gymnasts who enjoy this sport, as well as many people who support them. We would like to make efforts to develop this wonderful sport in a balanced way.

Next month, we are going to visit Italy. We have been invited to the “Festival Del Sole” again for the first time in 2 years. We hope we can apply what we have learned through this expedition to Finland to our performances in Italy.

And last but certainly not least, we would like to express our deepest gratitude to all those who have provided us with every possible means of support to guarantee the success of this expedition.