Sports and Recreation in Japan

Japan is one of those countries which have created their own sports and also their own variations of Martial Arts. Kendo, Judo, Karate, Kyudo and of course Sumo are still associated with Japan. Besides these original disciplines the nation has recreated popular sports from the States and Europe, which also became quite popular. What do I mean by recreate? Baseball for example became the most watched and most played sport all over the four islands. But you can’t compare the Japanese style with its American origins. As most “borrowed” sports Baseball just seems to be the same game, but in fact it got modified with Japanese values, -customs and -spirituality (Kelly 1998: 96). In my opinion this is exactly the reason why Baseball became so popular. It’s not about the game itself, it’s about the team, its supporters and its unique fan-culture. Hence big parts of this society are apparently somehow affiliated to at least one sport.

(Japanese High School Baseball, picture borrowed from japannewbie.com)

Discipline and loyalty mainly are part of Japanese society, part of the Japanese working spirit and also part of Japanese sport- and club activities. But how is this possible in a country that has one of the highest average concerning annual working hours per year? Within the Japanese working environment free time (offside the working place) is still uncommon, that’s why for most employees occupation is not only part of their life, it is their life; the life of the so called “corporate warriors” (Gratton & Taylor 2000: 40f). I have observed that people are able to combine their sport-passion with their employment. Big companies have their own facilities for leisure and sports. In many cases they also have clubs and teams. These observations are verifying the notion that sport is iconic of national character (Kelly 1998: 95). However, the government certainly isn’t uninvolved in this development. The government’s strategy is to support economic development with the hosting of big sport events like Olympic Games, Koshien or Ekiden Kyoso. Barry Houlihan explains that these are “opportunities to project images of modern technological and organizationally sophisticated societies and economies (Houlihan 2000: 217).”

(Part of the future Olympic City: Tokyo 2016)

The information above may still not give you an image of how different teams and clubs approach their disciplines in comparison to your own club experiences. Therefore I want to share some “case study observations” with you. Of course this is only my perspective compared with the sport customs in my hometown: I play table tennis since many years now. Some decades ago table tennis was one of the most popular sports in Japan. Recently it also got a boom in the amateur sector. I was very curious about practicing in an Asian country together with the inhabitants, because I had already read about their daily practice routines before. However, since I joined the club of Kansai Gaidai, there are still some aces which I didn’t expect to discover. I was really surprised when I asked the club leader Hitomi, if they play any competitions. Besides some exhibition tournaments together with other universities of this prefecture, they don’t train for competition. I couldn’t believe that such skillful players just practice for fun on such a high level. This would be impossible in my home country. Strictly speaking it is the other way around. We have no circles or clubs who just meet for sharing their table tennis passion. Almost every club is registered in the national table tennis association and since I remember I only train to be able to compete with the other players in my region. The game comes first and then comes the team. The Kansai Gaidai club (as probably most others do) turns it upside down. That is what fascinates me about Japanese clubs. The team members are also good friends outside of the club and they take practice- and training customs very serious.

(Kansai Gaidai Table Tennis Club)

References:

Gratton, Chris/Taylor, Peter (2000): Economics of sport and recreation

Houlihan, Barrie (2000): Politics and Sport. In: J. Coakley & E. Dunning (Ed.): Handbook of sports studies

Kelly, William W. (1998): Blood and Guts in Japanese Professional Baseball. In: Linhart & Frühstück (Ed.): The Culture of Japan as seen through its Leisure

Recommended Site:

Recreation & Sports JGuide

Recommended Reading:

Japanese Baseball