Readers of Okazu, may have heard of Attack No. 1, the beloved sports manga and anime about a young woman who rises to become a volleyball star. Surely, you have seen the classic image of protagonist Kozue striking the ball with fierce determination.

There was a real volleyball team….and real “oni coach”. Their story is recounted in the documentary Witches of the Orient: Les Sorcières de l’Orient.  I was able to watch this for free on the Kanopy service with my library card. It is also available on the Hoopla service if your library has that. 

In this documentary, directed by Julien Faraut, who watched Attack No. 1 as child in France, discusses the rise of a factory team of volleyball players, who rose to become Olympic and world champions. It is a movie of triumph of the spirit, and a tribute to Kasai Masae, Miyamoto Emiko, Tanida Kinuko, Handa Yuriko, Matsumura Yoshiko, 
Issobe Sata, Matsumura Katsumi, Shinozaki Yoko, Sassaki Setsuko, Fujimoto Yuko, Kondo Massako and Shibuki Ayano. Through archival footage, first-person interviews and scenes of some of the women sharing a meal and talking about the old days, interspersed with footage from the Attack No. 1 anime, this story had me on the edge of my seat, and I not mean that figuratively. 

In the postwar years in Japan, as the country sought to recover economic power, many companies provided jobs and housing to young people out of school and for women, before marriage. To keep employees happy and foster teamwork,  factories would encourage sports teams which, naturally led to competition. In 1953, the Dai Nippon Spinning Co., Ltd’s Kaizuka factory team, plus a few other factory team members, took the world by storm, ultimately winning 24 consecutive matches during a European tour in 1961, where they were nicknamed the Oriental Witches, by the press. They had mostly determined to quit volleyball after that, but the 1964 Olympics were being held in Tokyo and volleyball was making it’s Olympic debut. They stayed. And won a nailbiter of a match over Russia. I knew they had won and I was still holding my breath at the footage of the final minutes of the game.

Their story has a very sobering facet, as well. We all are aware of the demon coach from Shoujo sports manga and anime in series like Attack No. 1 and Aim for the Ace!. It makes for good drama in fiction, but there is no escaping the fact that these women had an abusive and horrific coach in Daimatsu Hirofumi. It is in part because of him, that bearing up against all odds, in all weathers, with injury or exhaustion was for decades paraded as the pinnacle of training in manga. We can clearly see that these women – who worked a full day and then trained into the late night – were not given what they needed to win, they were tortured and yet, they won anyway. Witches, indeed. 

This is a movie I had been wanting to see for ages and I am very glad I was able to make time for it. I hope you’ll fire that library card up and watch it. (And if you don’t have one, please do go get one! It’s free! It gives you access to books and magazines and ebooks, and movies and other media. My library lends things like sewing machines and telescopes and software. All for about 70 cents a year in taxes. So please, support your local library! 

Ratings: 

Overall – 10