It was a small event. Still, an important progress was made.
Fighting for both Chernobyl and themselves
On 27th February, while the 2011 Tokyo marathon was taking place on a massive scale, a small charity kick-boxing match was held in Tokyo. When 36,000 runners were running in the centre of the city, 35 fighters were fighting on a small ring. Although it was small-scale, the charity game produced important results.
Trigger, a group to develop and support amateur young fighters, presented “Smile for Chernobyl by K-1” at Gold Gym South Tokyo Annex. Hiroyuki Iwakuma, the head of Chinese Fighting Promotion, who is involved in the group, and Mari Sasaki, the bureau chief of Chernobyl Children’s Fund (CCF), who has known him since she was at college, planned and organised the game. It was aimed at helping child victims of the Chernobyl disaster.
The game was important for both Trigger and CCF. First, Trigger. It is positioned between local training schools and K-1, a worldwide kick-boxing tournament, focusing on sending young talents to the top game. Today it has been hit by the recession; the number of matches and sponsors are smaller than before, hence less opportunities to develop young fighters decreased, making a generational change difficult.
A dark cloud is hanging over K-1. Mr Iwakuma says that companies paid around 100 thousand yen ($1,214) for advertising a few years ago, but it fell to between 20,000 and 50,000 yen today. Back in 2010, Fighting Entertainment Promotion, the host organisation of K-1, announced a tie-up with Puji Capitals, an investment bank in Shanghai, to expand the game in Asian and European markets. Conversely, they fear that the Japanese market is shrinking and facing a critical moment. Such a situation made Trigger take a new action.
It was the first time for Trigger and K-1 to host a charity game. There are reasons for that. First, K-1 is show business, thus needs TV broadcasting and sponsor companies: its first priority is to make profits out of the game. Unless there is no chance of making money, there is no incentive for them to host the game. If an electric power company promoting nuclear power becomes one of its sponsors, it is clearly difficult for them to have a Chernobyl charity match.
There is another reason why charity matches were never held in K-1. If it were culture in Japan, such an event would attract many people thus generating reasonable profits. But it isn’t. “Martial arts are not really culture in Japan”, says Mr Iwakuma. Compared with football or baseball, K-1’s history is much shorter and its population is perhaps small. Culture, he says, means that everyone has the same ideas about things they do wherever they are. It is in China that martial arts are so. Chinese people go to see the game of martial arts with their families. In Europe and South America, football is similar to that.
Meanwhile, this event was helpful for CCF, too. People are forgetting the Chernobyl disaster today. The Japanese media has barely reported about the tragedy for a while, either. The fund emphasises that what is needed now is to know it.
Normally, it is those who know the disaster that join events CCF organises. This time is different. “We want people who do not know about Chernobyl or those who are not interested in it to know about it. Thus, we are grateful for this charity game”, says Mrs Sasaki. In fact, much more people came to see the game than the organisers expected: around 200 people gathered.
How interested the participants would be in Chernobyl remains to be seen, however. Fighters and their coaches were concentrated on the game, taking it seriously. Many of them thought “why Chernobyl?” at first when asked to join the game by Mr Iwakuma. Fans seemed to be excited about auction items with autographs of famous K-1 fighters. Not many people seemed to pay attention to Mrs Sasaki’s speech on the ring about Chernobyl. Thus, it is unclear whether they properly understood the purpose of the game. But this worry does not really matter. She achieved her aim to tell them about Chernobyl. The auction was successful, raising a few hundred thousand yen. And, fighters are pure and have a desire to know about the tragedy. “We will see how they will act after the game”, Mr Iwakuma says optimistically.
The charity match will make child victims in Belarus and Ukraine delightful. Martial arts are widespread in the region as a sport policy introduced by the Soviet government encouraged people there to do them in the past. There are some children with cancers who like them, for example, a Belarussian boy who had been doing karate for a long time. He suffered from thyroid cancer. Though he was told to stop doing karate, he was determined to become healthy by continuing it rather than quitting. He is a fully-fledged member of society now. Mrs Sasaki thinks that they will feel very encouraged by the support they receive from Japanese fighters and martial arts fans. It brought them “a hope of life”.
If this charity game has influences on the world, they will differ across countries. In Japan, such a charity game should continue. The country is the only victim of atomic bombs. The recent Tiger Mask movement suggests that Japanese people are increasingly interested in charitable giving. According to Edelman’s Trust Barometer 2011, many Japanese companies promote corporate social responsibility (CSR). But the country encourages nuclear power, too. Western countries might be interested in the game. Martial arts are popular there. Although CSR is not regarded as important in European companies, many Americans and Britons make charitable donations. There is a view that Europe is not as keen on nuclear power as it used to be. China, by contrast, looks unlikely to be affected. It is seeking resources around the world to keep its economy growing: it promotes nuclear power. Many Chinese companies disdain CSR.
In such a complicated world, martial arts give future societies a glimmer of hope. Mind plays an important role in achieving success or goals. Mr Iwakuma says that a scientific approach to training is quite inadequate. But, if fighters work hard with specific images, they will realise that they can do unconsciously what they could not: thoughts take shape. In fact, this event was what he had been thinking about for a while. The scale of the event was small, but it will stay in their mind somehow or other. Like martial arts, it is no surprising to see that something emerges out of them. Its value is surely great.
Ryo Kubota is a staff writer at Transpheric Management in Tokyo as well as a freelance writer. He has covered Sports for the Nippon Newspaper Company in Tokyo and teaches at a private tutoring school in Iruma, Japan. Having studied in both Tokyo and England in the areas of sociology, he has a keen interest in the world at large.
