The opening ceremony of 2020 Tokyo Olympics is sure to catch millions of eye-balls but ahead of it, a synchronized walking event is making rounds on social media, especially the WhatsApp in Asia Pacific across many countries in the last two days. While the origin is uncertain, the wording that it was a rehearsal of the opening ceremony has left many believe in it.
Its caption reads: "Opening rehearsal of the Tokyo Olympic Games 2020. Watch till the end. Perfect precision...True to Japanese excellence." In other groups it was recommended as Must See video.
See the video:
Within minutes after the IB Times SG edition was tipped on the viral video, the team conducted due diligence to verify its authenticity and realized that it was an old video of July 2017 to be precise. Moreover, the art of synchronized walking is not new to Japan. Since 1966, it has been identified with students at the Nippon Sports Science University in Tokyo, known as 'shuudan koudou' or collective action.
The event features dozens of uniformly dressed students walking backwards, sideways, or in several curved directions in precise unison and no wonder many appreciated the drill at once and the video has gone viral on social media just ahead of the upcoming Olympics in Tokyo in July this year.
Japanese culture
A popular trait of the Japanese culture is that it abhors divisive or different behaviour as the saying in goes: "The nail that sticks up gets hammered down." Japan has been famous for its uniformity, order and discipline and any visitor will appreciate the display of this culture in every nook and corner of the country. The kind of precision observed in this video is an outcome of nearly three months of rigorous and regular practice and as practice makes one perfect, so is the 'shuudan koudou'.
As far as Tokyo Olympics 2020 is concerned, no such event has been finalized as per their website. But the video has surely caught the attention of millions worldwide as part of the opening ceremony of the global sports event.
