ABSTRACT

This chapter examines the history of sport in Japan by locating its development within significant periods of social, cultural and economic change over the following four periods: Pre-Meiji (before 1868), Meiji Era to the Pacific War (1868-1939), the post-war period (1945-93) and the contemporary period (1993-2008). In it I work with an interpretation of sport as a rationalized practice originating in the massive economic and social changes associated with industrialization in Great Britain, as suggested by sociologists and historians (Bourdieu 1978; Mangan 1981). While there are links between sport and the folk games of pre-industrial Europe, the unregulated folk games from which sport, as we now know it, developed cannot be considered as sport. From this perspective neither the plethora of court games of the nobility nor the aggressive games and contests of the peasant classes in Japan in the pre-Meiji Era (1868-1912) can be considered as sport. Some Japanese scholars make a similar distinction between the ‘sport-like’ activities of pre-Meiji Japan and ‘modern sport’ as that which originated from Western sports (for example, see Kusaka 2006). Working with this view of sport highlights the importance of the Meiji Era for its development in Japan. The Meiji Era was a period of immense change in Japan arising from the opening up of the country to the outside world after a long period of enforced isolation during the Tokugawa period (1603-1868). Like industrialization in 18th-century England, it brought about massive social, cultural and economic change tied into an opening up to the West that facilitated the development of sport. After two and a half centuries of isolation Japan’s rush to catch up withWestern powers involved the introduction of Western sports and their dissemination through the new system of mass education. The development of sport in Japan was not limited to the importation of Western

sport. Resulting from a backlash against the wholesale adoption of Western ideas and culture in the late 19th century, the military practices of the samurai classes were reconstituted into sporting forms in a process through which they were ‘sportified’ (Abe, Kiyohara and Nakajima 1990) beginning with judo and now referred to as martial arts (budo). The Meiji Restoration created the social, economic and cultural conditions from which sport emerged as a medium for the dissemination of a hegemonic culture politically promoted to ensure social cohesion during a period of dramatic social change as Japan shifted from an agrarian, feudal society to a modern, industrialized society over a remarkably short period (Light 2000a). The one explicit exception to this view of sport as being visible only from the Meiji Era is sumo. Sumo has a very long history in Japan, beginning in Japanese mythology and has been practised in many different forms for over 2,000 years. The rationalized, regulated and commercialized sporting practice that it is

today has changed little from the late 18th century. Indeed, its contemporary practice, cultural meanings and its attendant rituals are identifiable from the 17th century when its was reinvented as a quasi-religious practice (Light and Kinnaird 2002). For this reason sumo dominates the first section on sport in the pre-Meiji Era, which begins with a very brief outline of some significant court games and peasant contests.