Those kids are still going to be doing a lot of walking, though.

Tochigi Prefecture’s Otawara High School takes its school motto, “Shisso kenjitsu,” very seriously. Roughly translating to “spartan and sturdy,” it embodies the ideals of resilience and determination Otawara High seeks to instill in its students, and perhaps the clearest example of how it puts that philosophy into practice is its annual kyoho event.

Kyoho is written with the kanji characters 強 and 歩, meaning “strong” and “walking.” In a tradition that dates back to 1986, all of Otawara High’s students would first gather at the school on a spring morning, then depart for a walk through the mountainous cities of Otawara, Yaita, and Nasu Shiobara. That tri-city trek covered an 85-kilometer (52.8-mile) course, and while the kids made stops to eat and rest along the way, they didn’t spend the night in a hotel or lodge, instead walking all night before arriving back at their school around noon the day after they departed. The school describes the activity as promoting physical and mental strength, and also serving to deepen bonds between classmates.

▼ Video of last year’s Otawara High School kyoho

The kyoho was suspended because of the coronavirus pandemic from 2020 to 2022, and in 2023 it was cut short by bad weather. In 2024, students walked the full 85-kilometer course for the first time in five years, but that’s not going to happen this year, as the school has announced that the 2025 kyoho, which will take place later this year, will be shortened to a mere 35 kilometers (21.7 miles).

This isn’t a concession to modern concerns or complaints about the grueling distance, though, but rather a safety decision. You can’t just send a few hundred kids off on an all-night march without supervision and support systems, and adult organizers are stationed along the way to direct traffic, hand out water, and address health and safety-related issues that may arise. Because of the original course’s length, there aren’t enough teachers and academic administrators to cover all the necessary points along the way, and so the school also has to rely on help from parent volunteers. However, like many rural communities in Japan, Otawara’s population is shrinking, and the school’s enrollment has dropped from its previous high of about 1,000 students to only around 570 for this academic year. Fewer students means a smaller potential parent volunteer pool, and the school has determined that it no longer has the manpower to safely manage an 85-kilometer route.

So for this year’s kyoho, which will take place next Thursday, students will start their walk from the school’s campus at 9:45 in the morning and arrive at the Yu no Kaori Shiobara roadside rest area at 4:30 p.m., a 35-kilometer course that they’ll complete entirely in daylight hours.

There’s a somber reason that it’s not surprising Otawara High has been reexamining the safety of its school activities. In March of 2017, the school’s mountaineering club went on a teacher-administered training retreat in a still-snowy part of the town of Nasu. While conducting a snow-walking exercise, the group was caught in an avalanche, resulting in the deaths of seven students and one teacher. In a subsequent criminal trial the court determined that, given conditions at the time, the risk of an avalanche occurring was foreseeable, and sentenced three defendants, including teachers who had been supervising the club’s trip, to two years in prison for professional negligence. The verdict was handed down in March of 2024, and while that year’s kyoho in May went the full 85-kilometer distance, the court ruling was likely something the school was acutely aware of while evaluating the feasibility of such a long walk this year.

▼ A memorial service for the avalanche victims, held at the school’s campus in March of this year

This isn’t to say that Otawara High is completely softening its approach to “spartan and sturdy” education. On January 20 of this year, with a low temperature of 1.2 degrees Celsius (34.2 degrees Fahrenheit), the school opened its annual kangeiko “cold training” program, in which roughly 400 students assembled in the schoolyard before dawn for a seven-kilometer lap-running session around the grounds, continuing a tradition established by the school’s kendo club in the Meiji Period (1868-1912). “Are you all prepared?” principal Yoshikazu Kimijima asked the teens, followed by “It’s cold all over Japan, but let’s heat the entire country up with our spirit!” This wasn’t a one-day event, either, as the kangeiko continues for five consecutive days.

So the decision to truncate the kyoho down to just 35 kilometers isn’t one that Otawara High made joyously, with vice principal Hidenori Matsumoto saying “With safety administration issues becoming apparent, we had no choice but to shorten the distance.” While the school hasn’t officially made the change permanent, given that a shortage of parent volunteers is a key factor, the kyoho seems unlikely to return to its 85-kilometer form without some sort of influx of new residents to the town.

Source: Asahi Shimbun via Yahoo! Japan News, NHK, The Japan News, Mainichi Shimbun, Japan Times
Top image: Pakutaso
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