What Do You Call a Seesaw Results Announced Nishitsu Survey

This question is the results announcement for: What do you call a “seesaw”?

This article is part of Nishi2’s “What do you call this?” series, where we ask readers what they call certain things in Nishinomiya and turn the answers into an article!

This question was inspired by:

I called it “Gikkon Battam,” but I’m curious what other people called it.

We created this based on a hint from reader 7013F HK, but how many people are in the Gikkon Battam camp? Among the Nishi2 team, most people called it a seesaw.

We received 91 responses to the “seesaw” survey!

So, here’s what people in Nishinomiya call a seesaw!!

Survey Questions

• What do you call a seesaw?
• If you chose “Other,” please tell us exactly what you call it.
• If you lived outside Nishinomiya, which prefecture was it?
• How old are you?

What do you call a seesaw?

• More than the seesaw group, the Gikkon Battam group was the largest!!
• Next up, there were also many people who called it Gittan Bakkon.

By Age Group

Next, we looked at whether there were differences by age group.

• Most people in the Gikkon Battam group were in their 50s or older.
• The seesaw group was mainly people in their 40s or younger.

That said, it’s not as if there were only a few people in their 40s who said Gittan Battam. There were a fair number of them too.

Trends Among People Outside Nishinomiya

This time, we received submissions from people in Osaka, Hiroshima, Fukuoka, Tokyo, Wakayama, and parts of Hyogo outside Nishinomiya, but there wasn’t much difference from the overall statistics. The ranking is below.

1. Gikkon Battam: 14 votes
2. Seesaw: 4 votes
3. Gittan Bakkon: 4 votes
4. Gittan Battam: 2 votes
5. Other: 2 votes

List of Other Names

Here’s a summary of other ways people say Gikkon Battam.

• Gattan
• Gattanko
• Gikkon Batton
• Gitton Bakkon

Since it probably makes a rattling “gata-gata” sound, there were some in the Gattan group, and we also saw patterns where “kon” was pronounced as “ton.”

Apparently, It Used to Be Called “Giiko Battam”

It seems the seesaw was introduced to Japan as a physical playground activity during the Meiji period, and even before that, children were apparently playing repetitive games similar to seesaws. In a book published in Meiji 34 called “日本全国児童遊戯法” (Children’s Games Across Japan), there is apparently a mention of “giiko battam.” Source

When we looked into it, other names like “noboriko sagariko” also came up. So there seem to be various theories about why it came to be called “Gittan Battam,” but one theory says that children used to chant “Gittan Battam” while playing.

Lastly

I’m actually surprised that so many people say Gikkon Battam instead of seesaw. We’d like to keep running more “What do you call this?” surveys.