The story of Japanese tennis great Zenzo Shimizu's commendable behavior on the tennis court at the 1921 Davis Cup has been handed down to generations of Japanese school children. During a close championship match against an American team featuring tennis star Bill Tilden, Shimizu made a soft return of one of Tilden's shots because Tilden had slipped after making the shot. From this incident, Shimizu has been praised highly for his sportsmanship. The story was told in Japanese middle school textbooks before World War II and was adopted after the war for elementary school textbooks until the 1950's. However, an author began to doubt the truthfulness of the episode involving the two tennis legends, and there suddenly arose debate over whether or not the incident really happened. This study considers the authenticity of the event, focusing on Kaneji Yajima, who was the author that wrote the original account. The conclusion is summarized as follows: 1) Many of the accounts included in school textbooks had deviated from the writer's intension as they were handed down from textbook to textbook. Various adaptations were published by authors and editors who lost focus of the facts in relaying the moving events of the story. 2) In the post-war adaptations of the episode, the event occurred at the 1920 Wimbledon Tennis Championships rather than at the 1921 Davis Cup. In fact, a book was found which shows that Tilden slipped while playing against Shimizu during their 1920 match at Wimbledon. 3) Kaneji Yajima wrote his story in order to emphasize the instructive potential that sports has to offer. This study considers that Yajima created the inspirational story knowing full well that Tilden never slipped during the Davis Cup match. Yajima wanted to express an educational viewpoint that it is not good to stick to the extreme principle of competition and victory. The international event and Shimizu's fabled behavior embodied Yajima's ideal of athleticism and sportsmanship. A few historical facts about the incident have been successfully probed for accuracy, but there remains much conjecture and interpretation in this study. The matter calls for further investigation.

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The object of this paper is to clarify how sports activities were conducted at student dormitories operated by dokyo dantai (hometown organizations) during the Meiji and Taisho periods. Others have observed that student activities played a major role in the development of modern sports in Japan. Nevertheless, sports activities at student dormitories operated by hometown organizations remain relatively unexamined. Thus, we sought to clarify that sports activities did indeed flourish at student dormitories operated by hometown organizations, using activities held at the Saitama gakuseiyuekikai (student steering committee) dormitory as a case study, The following historical facts are clarified in this paper. First, students who lived at dormitories operated by hometown organizations during the Meiji and Taisho periods regularly took part in sports activities. We found that, as judo and kendo were introduced the end of the Meiji period, tennis was at first eliminated but later rehabilitated by the end of the Taisho period, and that this process is consistent with the way sports were accepted in Japan during this period of modernization. Second, the students often went on excursions. Although these excursions were originally conceived of as a means for physical education, they also functioned as leisure activities. Third, these dormitories operated by hometown organizations maintained close ties with their hometowns. Sports activities were more than just a way to maintain contact with the cities and towns of Saitama Prefecture, but also demonstrated the larger meaning of sports by functioning as a means to develop individual character and to cultivate the minds of youngsters still at home. As described above, our investigation demonstrated conclusively that a wide range of sports activities were conducted at student dormitories operated by hometown organizations during the Meiji and Taisho periods.

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