Every year, dozens of teams from all over Japan travel to the Japanese town of Ito to compete in one of the world’s most unique sporting events-All-Japan Pillow Fighting Championships.

Pillow fighting is an age-old pastime (消遣) practiced by children of all ages all over the world. Japan is no different; only here the game has been promoted to the status of national sport, with teams made up of people of all ages competing against each other for fame and fortune. After first battling it out in regional qualifying events, winning teams meet up in the small fishing town of Ito, south of Tokyo, to compete in the All-Japan Pillow Fighting Championships, for the title of Japan’s best pillow fighters.

The All-Japan Pillow Fighting Championships were inspired by makura-nage, the fun pillow fights that Japanese students do before bedtime when out on school trips. It’s a ritual (仪式) experienced by many Japanese, and one day some of them decided that it would be fun to relive those days as part of a competitive tournament (锦标赛). The tournament started in 2013 and has been held yearly ever since.

Started by a group of high school students in Shizuoka, competitive pillow fighting is based on a set of quirky (古怪的) yet relatively simple rules. A game is played between two teams of five players wearing yucatas, a kind of traditional summer clothing, and starts with the players pretending to sleep on futons (床垫), until the referee(裁判) blows their whistle, signaing (发信号) them to get up and reach for a pillow.

From this point on, pillow fighting is similar to dodgeball, in that the goal is to hit the opposing (对手的) team’s players, preferably their captain, with pillows to send them out of the game. Still, it remains a very unique sport with unusual rules, such as shouting the phrase “The teacher is coming", thus forcing the opposing team to retreat to their futons for 10 seconds, allowing them to move around and fetch pillows from the other side of the court.

The final goal in competitive pillow fighting is to hit the opposing captain. When that happens, even if all the opposing players are still in the game, the round is over. The first team to win two two-minute rounds wins the game. To make sure the captain is protected throughout the rounds, one player on each team can use a duvet (羽绒被) to protect them against pillows.

Many companies employ some form of ranking systems to assess employees’ performance, and then determine promotion accordingly. Performance rankings don’t necessarily involve competition for physical or financial resources, but they do create competition for another kind of resource: social status.

To better understand how social status ranking affects men and women differently, my colleagues and I conducted a series of lab experiments. The participants were asked to complete simple tasks and they were told that they would receive one Euro for each task they completed. This meant they were all equally rewarded, and were thus not competing for financial resources. Then, we told one group of participants that they would be ranked against each other based on their performance, while participants in the other group weren’t told anything.

We found that just anticipating that they would be ranked significantly impacted participants’ performance, and that the impact was noticeably different for men and for women. When participants weren’t told that they’d be ranked, men and women performed at essentially the same level. But when they were told that they would be ranked, men performed better than those who weren’t told anything, while women performed a lot worse.

It’s also found that the gender difference caused by competitive environments isn’t simply because of the misconception that women are naturally less competitive than men. Rather, these environments trigger the assumption that men are superior and that women should be kind to others. And it in turn leads to gender differences in performance.

In sum, these findings suggest that competitive social ranking systems can have a major effect on performance, and more importantly, they can have very different effects on men and on women. It’s hard to imagine a world in which competition is removed entirely —so how can organizations get the benefits of competitive environments while providing a fairer environment for their female employees?

My First Marathon(马拉松)

A month before my first marathon, one of my ankles(脚踝) was injured and this meant not running for two weeks,leaving me only two weeks to train. Yet, I was determined to go ahead.

I remember back to my 7th year in school. In my first P.E.class, the teacher required us to run laps and then hit a softball. I didn’t do either well. He later informed(通知) me that I was “not athletic”.

The idea that I was “not athletic” stuck with me for years. When I started running in my 30s, I realized running was a battle against myself,not about competition or whether or not I was athletic. It was all about the battle against my own body and mind.A test of wills!

The night before my marathon, I dreamt that I couldn’t even find the finish line. I woke up sweating and nervous, but ready to prove something to myself.

Shortly after crossing the start line, my shoe laces(鞋带) became untied. So I stopped to readjust(重新调整). Not the start I wanted!

At mile 3, I passed a sign: “GO FOR IT,RUNNERS!”

By mile 17, I became out of breath and the once injured ankle hurt badly. Despite the pain,I stayed the course walking a bit and then running again.

By mile 21,I was starving!

As I approached mile 23, I could see my wife waving a sign. She is my biggest fan. She never minded the alarm clock sounding at 4 am or questioned my expenses on running.

I was one of the final runners to finish. But I finished! And I got a medal. In fact, I got the same medal as the one that the guy who came in first place had.

Determined to be myself, move forward, free of shame and worldly labels(世俗标签), I can now call myself a “marathon winner”.