What Is an Ouendan? Japan's Shouting, Uniformed Cheer Squads, Explained
In Japan, some schools cheer on their teams with black-uniformed squads that bellow and move in rigid, drilled patterns. Here's what an ouendan is, why comedians love it, and where to see it on stage.
What is an ouendan?
An ouendan (at some universities it's called an ouenbu) is a cheering club found at many Japanese high schools and colleges. Members usually wear the gakuran, a black, high-collared school uniform, and rally support for their school's sports teams with booming voices, sharp, drilled arm movements, and formal chants known as "yells." Many squads are known for a strict senior-junior hierarchy and tough practices, and plenty of people see them as a living piece of old-school student culture.
Some American readers might think of it as a distant cousin of cheerleading, but the look and mood are usually very different: less pom-poms and pyramids, more stern faces and full-volume discipline. How strict a squad is can vary a lot from school to school.
Why comedians love it
Our take: the ouendan is built for comedy because it's all intensity and form. When a performer brings that dead-serious posture, the shouted yells, and the rigid choreography to something small, silly, or completely unworthy of the effort, the mismatch does a lot of the work before a single joke lands.
The club's reputation for strict seniority is another rich vein. Many Japanese viewers have lived through some version of club-activity hierarchy themselves, so a comedian who plays up its unwritten rules can get knowing laughs, whether or not the audience ever wore a gakuran.
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We use AI as part of how we create our articles.
Subtitles on this video: AI translation from the Japanese.