Abstract
The task assigned to the author is to discuss the issues surrounding sports and violence, focusing on Japanese martial arts. Therefore, this article based on the Norbert Elias’s theory, specifically addressing civilization, self-restraint, and sportisasion.
When examining civilization in Japan as a case study, the three periods of interest are the early modern period, the Meiji Restoration, and the period of occupation by GHQ. Various policies were involved in the monopoly of violence by the shogunate in the early modern period. One of the most serious issues was how to curb the violence of the samurai, who were the main actors in the monopoly of violence. The Shinkage-ryu was the technique that encouraged the warriors to exercise self-restraint. In order to achieve this, Shinkage-ryu, which is based on the principle of not cutting and not being cut, required the students to suppress their emotional ups and downs. When violence was temporarily eliminated in the limited space of practice, they obtained the beginnings of self-restraint.
During the Meiji Restoration, there was a conflict between the volunteer military composed of samurai clans and the government’s conscript army. However, the identity of the samurai was shaken after the Sino-Japanese War, in which volunteer soldiers were banned and conscripts won the war. The Dai Nippon Butokukai was established to restore the honor of the samurai and integrate budo into the Emperor’s state. At the same time, Jigoro Kano established the Kodokan, a judo school, in the field of education. Although neither the Butokukai nor the Kodokan had given up the martiality of budo, from the 20th century onward, budo became a sport in the Eliasian sense of the word, centering on student budo.
After the GHQ occupation, budo was forced to revive itself as a sport, but in the midst of this, budo’s martiality declined, and it became a sport in the Eliasian sense of the word.
