Super awesome cool, boss! Another day, another bizarre sport from Japan. Unfortunately this one doesn’t involve weird porn fetishes. Just large groups of military cadets beating each other up over a pole. Hmmm this is exactly what those conservatives are worried about with the demise of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”.

Bo-Taoshi (Pole pull-down) is played by cadets at Japan’s National Defense Academy. The game itself, which consists of 150 people and a pole, is quite simple. 75 men have to defend their team’s pole while the other 75 try to take it down by any means necessary. This much is clear. The rest of our information comes from Google translations of Japanese pages so don’t blame us if we don’t have it down.

The game seems to have been first played in 1954-55. The pole doesn’t have to hit the ground completely. It only had to go down 45 degrees until 1973 when the rules were changed to force teams to drop it to a 30 degree angle. One can only assume the losing team has to commit seppuku in front of the spectators. There is no honor in losing. Forgiveness please!

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