Japan schoolchildren learn balance on unicycles

AT HOME, Japanese schoolchildren balance their families’ traditional expectations with the realities of modern life. In class, they balance course loads that include drilling multiplication tables and writing kanji characters.

But it is at recess where they really balance – on unicycles.

Most elementary schools across the country offer a rack of unicycles for children to ride during breaks on the playground. The Ministry of Education, as part of its recommendations for physi- cal development, recommends that schools supply unicycles, bamboo stilts, hula hoops and other equipment that promotes balance and core strength.

The Japan Lottery Association, a collection of public lotteries, regularly donates money to schools for the purchase of unicycles. Last year the association gave money to support the purchase of 2,000 unicycles for public schools throughout the country. Every year, students compete in the All Japan Elementary School Student Championships of Unicycling.

On a recent visit during morning recess at Kyuden Elementary School in the Setagaya ward of Tokyo, children raced to a rack of more than 80 unicycles with brightly coloured wheels and began riding around the sand and gravel playground.

Some children were just learning, clinging to monkey bars or the shoulders of friends. Others sped fluidly across the playground for more than 20 metres at a time. Pairs of girls twirled around, arm in arm and perfectly balanced. Several girls rode unicycles over a metre tall.

No one wore a helmet or kneepads, and the few adults on the playground left the children alone. One of the school nurses, Kumiko Hatanaka, said that in three years of working at the school, she has treated only one or two injuries caused by unicycle riding.

Katsuhiro Ominato, the vice principal at Kyuden, said that the children never receive formal instruction, but are left to learn on their own or to teach one another. Some of the most passionate riders – nearly all girls – are members of an after-school club where they prepare for an annual parade, keep the tyres pumped full of air and make sure the unicycles are neatly hung on their racks.

Riding unicycles is part of a culture that urges elementary school-age children to do things on their own, including taking the subway or walking around city neighbourhoods.

“I see kids being challenged and encouraged to do things that I have never seen kids encouraged to do in the US,” said Matthew Thibeault, an American who teaches at a middle school affiliated with Toyama University on the west coast of Japan, “and a lot of equipment that would be considered risky.”