Hello and welcome to the history of Japan podcast, episode 581, The Men of Chivalry, Part 1.

The last few months have given me much occasion to think about the idea of heroes.

You see, when we think about sports, I put it to you that at least some of what we are

really talking about is our concept of what a hero is.

The pure achievement of it all is, of course, important being impressed by the athleticism,

by the grit, by the determination, but there is a reason that basically every sports movie

ends with some form of long-form speech about the importance of character, inspiring us to

some sort of universal lesson that is merely grounded

in, say, ice hockey, or integration in high school football, or the Jamaican bobsled

team.

Why, yes, I did grow up in the 90s.

How can you tell?

But these speeches always tell us the real point of this whole story is supposed to be about

lessons of character that apply on and off the field.

Similarly, the burden of the Tsuna, which Akebono felt so heavily upon his promotion, was at

its core about character, about a certain notion of what it means to have good character,

to be a role model to inspire others, and a refusal to accept anything

less than perfection from yourself.

In a somewhat similar way, Miyazaki Manabu was a certain kind of hero for a certain kind of age,

or at least he liked to present himself that way.

The rebel without a cause, the man opposed to the heartlessness of the system,

willing to go to any length, any extreme for those he cared about, the sort of story he crafted

...