Interpretations of Sport

“Dan-kyu Seido”, the Japanese System of Grading in Sports

Abstract

In this paper, the word Interpretation refers to the following three events.
1) As Japan imported modern sports, developed in the Britich public schools and based on the spirit of “amateurism”, during the Meiji period and after, the various martial arts were restructured into “bu-do” based on the spirit of “busi-do” and incorporated into the system of formal education. In this process, the “dan-kyu seido, ” the Japanese system of grading in sports, was separated from the “Iemoto” system, which had supported the Japanese body culture until then, and redefined as a device to support the form of modern sport called “Bu-do”. 2) This “dan-kyu seido” then began to be used for the importation of foreign sports such as skiing. 3) Through the use of the “dan-kyu” system, the typical bourgeois sport of skiing was transformed into a popular sport.
These three interpretations I feel provide examples which support Hargreaves' ideas on the relations between sport and society. His hegemony theory was born from a criticism of Marxist ideology theory enslaved to the base/superstructure model. By interpreting sports on the same level as other social practices such as religion, politics, and economics, his theory frees us from both the stance that sports are merely the “opiate” of the masses in a capitalist society, and that unconditionally acclaims sport as a universal mode of personal development.
This paper can be read as a post-evolutionist history of sport, but it is no accident that it also serves to deconstruct the ethnocentric myth of Japanese uniqueness.