Abstract
The World Masters Games, which is the one of the biggest participant sport events, will
be hosted in Kansai in 2021. The purpose of this report was to explore constraints and constraint
negotiation among Japanese masters games participants in the international masters games. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight Japanese masters athletes in the World Masters
Games 2017 Auckland by asking about any problems they experienced (constraints) and the
strategies they adopted to overcome those problems (constraint negotiation). The results revealed
that Japanese participants in the international masters games experienced time constraints related
to work and family responsibilities. To overcome those constraints, they tried to manage their work
schedules (time negotiation) and to gain both understanding and support from their colleagues
and families (interpersonal negotiation) in order to participate in the international masters games.
Through a series of interviews, we cognized that Japanese participants in the international masters
games stood face to face with their constraints to overcome them using their respective strategies.
