(Newswire.net — November 18, 2020) — The Land of the Rising Sun is a horseracing country from top to bottom, boasting annual revenues of multi-billion dollars. Japanese love horse racing more than any other people on earth. But why does horse racing catch their hearts so deeply?
Shuji Terayama’s literary gamble
In the field of literature, there are a number of literary masters who were known to be obsessed with gambling such as Hemingway and Dostoevsky. In Japan, Shuji Terayama is one of the prominent literary figures who was possessed by the beauty of horse racing. As he named his racehorse “Ulysses”, Terayama’s obsession with horse racing drove him to sublimate it into literature.
Terayama became a darling of the era when publications covering racing were established in Japan. In 1966, he published his first book on horse racing, followed by “Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets”. Terayama’s poem “Farewell Haiseiko” is still well-memorised among Japanese people, encapsulating their strong emotions for racing in the 1970s.:
“Haiseiko
Only hope is left behind in the wide racetrack
where you’re gone
and the wind is blowing
Do not turn around
Do not turn around
There is no dream behind
Even if haiseiko disappears
It does not mean that all races end
At the racetrack named life
A flock of million unnamed Haiseiko
Is waiting for the next race
In the sunrise
I can hear the sound of the earth being overtaken”
Japanese dream & horse racing
The poem resonated with how Japanese people recollected the daydreaming experience of Haiseiko’s run in the midst of the 70s oil crisis nightmare. Terayama published many poems about horse racing, and his narratives of horse racing and life contributed to the story in horse racing.
As manifested in many writings of Terayama, horse racing literally lived together with the Japanese dream of becoming an economic juggernaut in the 1970s. After a ruinous World War II, Japan never stopped dreaming of catching up with and surpassing the U.S. economy. This Japanese dream is somewhat reminiscent of the American dream.
According to Terayama, it is the sense of speed that draws Japanese people to horse racing in particular. In his account, speed in horse racing is metaphorical to the rest of the world, but for Japan it is a real thing ― “If the suits, apartments, and meals are all distributed equally, we will be caught up in a bunch of turtles”. In this storytelling, horse racing is a very ideological act at the mindset of Japanese life in speed, in the system of capitalism.
Japanese culture of horse racing
On November 15th, The Queen Elizabeth II Cup was held at the Hanshin Racecourse and its sales revenues recorded an increase from last year to 15.9 billion yen. While overseas big races such as the British Derby and the Kentucky Derby were rescheduled, JRA continued carrying out the regular classic seasons and drove sales via JRA-Net. Online betting is gaining in popularity and an increasing number of bookmakers are accepting online bets from Japanese players as well.
There is a unique culture that Japanese horse racing has nurtured over time in the process of spreading this leisure activity to a massive public gambling phenomena. Terayama noted that, for Japanese people “life is an embodiment of horse racing”. As he suggests, the rationale for their obsession appears to be based on a feeling that the story of the Japanese dream is lived somewhere on the race tracks.