Racial Discourse in Sports Media in Japan

Abstract

This paper attempts to illustrate one of the main discourses on race to be found in the sports media in Japan. In 2007 a Japanese translation of Hoberman's 1997 book on the myth of race was published. In this book, Hoberman argues that the commonly held conception that black athletes have innate, genetically superior physical abilities is a damaging myth. In the social sciences, the concept of a biological basis for race has been discredited. Stuart Hall (Hall and Jhally, 1996) calls race a discursive category.
The perception that black athletes have a genetic physical advantage in sport is also quite common in the sport media in Japan. However, the main racial discourse in the Japanese media is not about black and white. It is about the Japanese race. Japanese athletes are often described as having genetically-based physical characteristics that distinguish them from non-Japanese athletes. This paper analyzes several instances from the print and broadcast media. Sports involved are track and field, and sumo. It will be seen that within the discourse on the Japanese race, meaning is not fixed. There are differences in meaning between texts, and within the same text.