エスニック・スポーツとしての「箱根駅伝」

抄録

  This study focuses on Tokyo-Hakone College Marathon Relay (commonly known as "Hakone Ekiden") and discusses the sport and physical culture which has been generated and succeeded through college sports in Japan. Hakone Ekiden is one of the "Three major Ekiden tournaments" along with Izumo Ekiden and All-Japan University Ekiden. Although the goal of Hakone Ekiden was originally to build world-class runners, people recently tend to find more values in Hakone Ekiden itself. A word "Ekiden Supremacy" has appeared, and more and more attention has been gathered in Hakone Ekiden. For Example, it is not too much to say that schedules of athletes who belong to very strong long distance team focus on Hakone Ekiden rather than All-Japan Inter College. One section of Hakone Ekiden is about 20km (so-called "Hakone distance"), and building runners who can achieve best performance here has become one of the standards of long-distance coaching. It is meaningful to analyze the formation and the expansion of values with a focus on Hakone Ekiden. On the other hand, some brilliant athletes finish their lives as athletes when they finish their race in Hakone Ekiden. This is called “Hakone Ekiden bum out syndrome”. For these reasons, Hakone Ekiden is remarkable in both good ways and bad ways. Furthermore, the environment surrounding the Hakone Ekiden is very unique and that unique perspective of how people cherish those values is worth noting as one culture. For example, traditional schools put special holy values on "sash" and "uniform" during the competition. The treatment of them are ceremonious and recognized unique values of the world, and it can be said that the teams themselves own ritual aspects. This paper mainly focuses ori Hakone Ekiden, broadening the discussion to its historical background and ritualistic atmosphere generated by student athletes, and anylizes the student sport and physical culture which is established as one of the Japanese cultures.