＜prologue＞
I started a blog called “The Baby Boomer Generation’s Miscellaneous Blog”（Dankai-sedai no garakutatyou:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳） in July 2018, about a year before I fully retired. More than six years have passed since then, and the number of articles has increased considerably.
So, in order to make them accessible to people who don’t understand Japanese, I decided to translate my past articles into English and publish them.
It may sound a bit exaggerated, but I would like to make this my life’s work.
It should be noted that haiku and waka （Japanese short fixed form poems） are quite difficult to translate into English, so some parts are written in Japanese.
If you are interested in haiku or waka and would like to know more, please read introductory or specialized books on haiku or waka written in English.
I also write many articles about the Japanese language. I would be happy if these inspire more people to want to learn Japanese.
my blog’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳 | 団塊世代が雑学や面白い話を発信しています
my X’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多帳（@historia49) on X
<Added April 26, 2021> Is Yuzuru Hanyu’s “I’m not thinking about the Beijing Olympics” a protest against unfair judging?
Following the men’s free skating performance at the IAAF World Team Trophy held in Osaka (April 15-18), he responded to an online interview with foreign media outlets. He was asked, “Have you had any asthma problems this week? Are you worried about your asthma getting worse when you go to Beijing?” In response to the rude and spiteful question, he replied, “I’m not thinking about the Beijing Olympics. I hope the Tokyo Olympics are held this year. I don’t have any asthma problems. I was in good physical condition heading into this competition.”
He set new personal bests for this season in both the short and free skating programs, but came in second in both, losing to Nathan Chen (USA). Japan placed third, behind Russia and the US.
The problem lay in “unfair judging.” While both the “technical score” and “component score” are determined by the judges, the “grade of execution” (GOE) given to Hanyu’s perfect triple jump was unnaturally low.
In fact, many people complained that the scoring of women’s singles skaters Rika Kihira and Kaori Sakamoto at the World Championships was “too harsh.”
There is also strong suspicion that the scoring was “arbitrary and low” to target Japanese skaters. It’s no wonder that Yuzuru Hanyu’s patience has finally run out.
I previously wrote that “the majority of performing arts and other fine arts are ‘momentary art.'” This time, I’d like to consider two sports, figure skating and rhythmic gymnastics, which share a similar element of momentary art in their artistic scores.
I believe that figure skating is a sacred, one-off performance, performed exclusively for the people sharing the same time and place (including television viewers), a “here and now.”
1. Figure Skating
Figure skating is perhaps more popular in no other country than Japan, and even at international competitions, commercials for Japanese companies are the only thing visible around the rink. The secret to its popularity is likely the fact that Japan always has multiple world-class skaters, both male and female.
Figure skating is scored based on technical and performance components, with the latter being a more refined version of the traditional artistic score.
The performance components are comprised of five categories: skating skills, transitions, performance, choreography/composition, and musical interpretation.
Compared to “music competitions” and the like, there appear to be clearer judging standards, but the fact that “dynamic visual acuity” and “it is dependent on the judges’ subjectivity” is an indecisive point that is common to judging in other “artistic fields.”
2. Rhythmic Gymnastics
I haven’t been watching rhythmic gymnastics much recently, perhaps because there are fewer top gymnasts or because there is less television coverage, but I used to watch it a lot when Yamazaki Hiroko was on the rise.
I thought that the “artistic score” was also important in this sport, but when I looked into it recently, I was surprised to find that the current scoring method only consists of a “D score, which indicates the difficulty of the performance,” and an “E score, which indicates the quality of the execution,” and there is no “artistic score.”
However, it seems that in 2018, FIG (International Gymnastics Federation) decided to create a new scoring category to evaluate the artistic quality of performances, starting with the 2021 season after the Tokyo Olympics.
Starting with the 2021 season, in order to enhance artistic quality and beauty, artistic elements such as harmony with the music, dynamic changes, and ideas will be scored as “artistic scores,” separate from the E score that was previously included.
However, just like figure skating, the problem of it being “dependent on the judges’ subjectivity” remains.
Although both events are recorded, I believe that the judging process is similar to that of “instantaneous art,” and the ability to fairly evaluate the performance in the moment will increase the “reliability of the scoring” of the events.