Abstract
This article focuses on current issues of Japanese company-organized sport. From the beginning of the Taisho era, Japanese companies have organized such sport activities as company athletic meets to foster a sense of solidarity and unity among employees. Along with the system of lifelong employment and pay scales based on seniority, this constituted one of the main pillars of Japanese-style management. Companyorganized sport for employees includes both recreational sport activities and high performance, competitive sport. In fact, company-organized sport has played an important part in Japanese high performance sport. At most Olympic Games, company athletes or teams have represented Japan, and indeed, they have often comprised almost half of the Japanese team. However, responding to the severe economic conditions of the 1990s, many companies began to reform their management systems. As a result, some companies began to withdraw from high performance sport because of the costs involved. This is having a significant impact on Japanese high performance sport.
These issues seem to have their causes not only in company-organized sport itself, but in wider aspects of the Japanese sport system. We should therefore reconsider the Japanese sport system as a whole. To analyze these issues we use Esping Andersen’s Social Welfare Regime framework, which focuses on the way agents act in specific roles and how they combine in response to surrounding socio-historical conditions. It also takes particular note of the scale of enlarging social rights, de-commoditizing and widening social disparities. We try to apply this framework to the Japanese sport regime, in particular focusing on company-organized sport.
