1906 Girls' Track Meet At PS 62 Field, Part 3

From the intro of the book pictured. Perhaps Nagai Michiakira
(the person who observed the special PS62 athletic display) was one of those guys in those WW2 films who says, "I studied at your America Universities ad learned your ways."

Even today at any Japanese school, when a teacher or visitor enters a class-room or assembly, the students will be called to attention with the command ‘Kiotsuke! (Attention!).’ The third chapter, by sport sociologist Shimizu Satoshi, profiles the Meiji educator, Nagai Michiakira, who created the command, as well as its body posture. At the outset of the new Meiji state, organized calisthenics (taisō) had strong associations with military drills, and given official concern for a strong soldier-citizenry, calisthenics were introduced into the schools as physical training. Mori Arinori, who became Japan’s first Minister of Educa-tion in 1885, mandated gymnastics as a required subject in school curricula through the Normal Schools Act of 1886. Shimizu shows Nagai, whose manual on taisō gymnastics became the template for most physical training, was at odds with a narrow military objective. Nonetheless he fashioned a format that created strong resonances between school taisō, military taisō, marching, Field Days, and school fieldtrips that continued into wartime mobilization.