今回綱引きをして思ったことがある。それは“綱引きという言葉の使い方だ。私の国の新聞ではよく「綱引き」という言葉が使う。それは綱引きという競技がそんなに人気があるからではない。与党と野党の綱引き、政府と民間の綱引き、などなど“一つのものを二者でとりあって争うことに綱引きという言葉が使う。考えてみれば国そのものもそうです。爪で切れることが出来た、内戦という木も斧で切っても切れないような深刻な問題になっている。それは昔から今までの国のえらい人達が民族問題と綱引していたからと新聞とかで書かれている。

　なぜ私たちいい意味での綱引きを強調しないでしょうか？スリランカの例を考えても、タミル、ムスリム、シンハラまたはその他の民族、それぞれが強い自分を持っている、強い癖を持っている。だから国として一つの型に合わせることが出来なくなっている。スリランカという同じ目標にみんなばらばらに動いている。一人一人、力があるけど、私たちが「わしら同級生」に負けたように、国としてどんどん送れていく。新聞が私たち、綱引き強いチームのように一緒になろう。民族性という強い自分を捨てて、何々じんという癖を捨てて、国を発展に引っ張りましょうという記事がいつ書けるのでしょうか？

　綱引き終わって、公民館で直会（なおらい）をやったとき、隣にいたおじいさん、

“ あなたこんな田舎にいて、親も心配しているでしょう、何かいいもの学んで帰りなさい″

 The April 16th was a special day for all of us, because it was the 22nd tug of war festival of　our island. Teams from Nishinoshima Island and Okinoshima Island also participated to the competition. There were 27 teams with more than 300 competitors. It’s the second biggest festival of the island which is only second to the Kinnya monya dance festival. This time I also got a chance to take part in the competition by representing the Kitabu ward.

 You may wonder to hear that, there are teams that start practicing one month before the competition. I also surprised, but after participating to the tournament I really understood why they start practicing so early. Normally we think that young team with full of power will win the tournament. I also thought like that, but I was wrong. There was a team that proved us, it’s not power or youthfulness. Their name is (Washira Dokyusei) which means “we are classmates”. They are 48 years old and no one of them is Sumo type. But they were able to beat many of the young teams and became the third of the competition. They proved us tug of war is all about technique and spirits. So I was very keen to search those techniques. So I found this kind of techniques of the game .Extract from your self. Extract from your habits. Adapt your self to a right habit. Then you can defeat any strong young team.

 There is one thing I thought after participating to tug of war. That’s the use of this word “Tug of war”. In my country you can see this word very often in news papers, not because tug of war is so famous in my country, because we use it to express the meaning of “two people or two groups of people fight for one object. You can often find headlines of, tug of war between ruling party and the opposition, tug of war between the government and private sector. If we think it further, since the independence, elite of our country were in tug of war between each other. So they were not able to bring any sort of solution to the ethnic conflict. Ethnic conflict was a small plant that had chance to cut even by the finger nail. But today it has grown up to the big tree that even can not cut by an axe. I think up to here its all same. You have heard it before or may be you also use the “tug of war to express the same kind of feeling.

 After I went in deep in to the history of tug of war in Japan, I felt that there are many valuable meanings inside the game, which also can applied to my country, May be for the whole world. If we take the example of Sri Lanka,　Muslims, Tamils ,Sinhalese and other ethnic groups are living in a one country. Each ethnic group has it own identity. It’s a great thing, but I personally think sometimes we have stick in to it. Sometimes they have strong habits. Sometimes they don’t want to sacrifice their habits for sake of ethnic integrity. So it is really hard to move towards a one goal as one country. But For instance　if we can applied the techniques of tug of war to our nation, in other words if we can extract out from nationality rooted thinking, if we can pull out from the nationality rooted habits, and if we can make a one spirit “Let’s pull the country towards forward” I think things can be better off comparing to the present situation. Unfortunately I have never seen an article like “let’s be the best tug of war team to take this country to development.