Japan Journal of Sport Sociology
Online ISSN : 2185-8691
Print ISSN : 0919-2751
ISSN-L : 0919-2751
Volume 17, Issue 2
Displaying 1-8 of 8 articles from this issue
  • Jie LIU
    2009 Volume 17 Issue 2 Pages 3-14
    Published: September 30, 2009
    Released on J-STAGE: October 05, 2016
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
     The Tai Chi tournament performed in the early morning of August 8, 2009 declared the opening of the China National Sports Day. Many mass media of China wrote up that the Olympic spirit has penetrated deeply into the Chinese blood. The effects of Olympic Games in Beijing extended not just over the world of sports but also the civil society. After Olympic Games, there are a lot of intellectuals expressed their opinions to advocate the coordination with the international community and criticize the Super patriotism which the book “China is angry”insisted. This phenomenon proves that a healthy space of public opinion is taking form in China.
     In recent years, with the social and economic evolution many NGO and NPO came into existence in China. Their activities are not mobilized as the mass movements used to be. Because of their volunteer activities, the specialists proclaimed that 2009 is the first year of Chinese civil society.
     The Olympic Games have also caused an argument about the liberty, democracy and human rights. Many experts called these pieces of concept general value. The catch phrase of Beijing Olympics was “One World, One Dream”. Many Chinese people are beginning to believe that the “One Dream” should be the general value which the people in the advanced countries believe.
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Orijinal
  • Takayuki YAMASHITA
    2009 Volume 17 Issue 2 Pages 17-31
    Published: September 30, 2009
    Released on J-STAGE: October 05, 2016
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
     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.
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  • Masao INOUE
    2009 Volume 17 Issue 2 Pages 33-47
    Published: September 30, 2009
    Released on J-STAGE: October 05, 2016
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
     The decline of corporate sports teams, stems from their history as a type of company employee welfare measure for boosting employee identification with the company. Although the function of corporate advertising was later added to sports and underwent redefinition from the viewpoint of corporate social responsibility, the cost benefit of corporate sports programs has always been subject to the bottom line. The decline of corporate sports is a grave problem because it has the potential to weaken Japanese professional sports, which relies on corporate sports programs to supply top athletes, and in so doing further undermine community life in the regions of Japan. Thus companies have pursued changes in the management of their sports teams, transforming them to the regionally-based club or semi-pro teams. This led to the birth of the pro soccer J-League and an independent semi-pro Japanese baseball league. J-League and the independent baseball league, however, could not use Japanese professional baseball league as a business model because of many problems at the professional level. For example, over the long term it has been unable to achieve an exciting level of game competition due to an uneven distribution of power among teams, it continues to suffer from a lack of independent corporate management and it has authoritarian labor-management relations. In addition, the legal status of professional sports athletes in Japan is vague compared with other advanced countries and the short length of an active sports career confronts many athletes with the problem of how to maintain a long-term social existence after retirement from professional sports. Thus a second career becomes important.
     It should be emphasized that the rapid decision-making abilities, powers of concentration, self-control, resilience, vigorous energy and other human capabilities developed by sports athletes in the world of extreme sports competition can carry over to provide significant second-career advantages. Today, professional sports are likely to play a key role in helping Japan’s regional communities overcome the increasingly damaging effects of the global economy.
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  • Hiroshi MIZUKAMI
    2009 Volume 17 Issue 2 Pages 49-64
    Published: September 30, 2009
    Released on J-STAGE: October 05, 2016
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
     By describing the life history of Yutaka Demachi, a member of the volleyball team at Nippon Kokan K.K. (NKK), this paper will uncover the kinds of work experiences these top athletes underwent within the context of the kinds of sports careers they enjoyed. Based on these conclusions, this paper will attempt to explore not only the significance of life history studies in discussing the future of corporate sports but also working environments and employment models for regularly employing top athletes as useful human resources.
     Top athletes accepted the labor management scheme that established the system of lifetime employment and seniority payment, and they played a role in stabilizing the relationships among full-time employees by avoiding special treatment. In addition, through status mobility, they built positive self-images of committing themselves to the workplace as a seamless extension of positive self-images of themselves being able to handle both work and sports during their youth, the period in which they acquired their vocational skills.
     To study labor environments and employment models for employing a corporate athlete as a full-time worker, it is necessary not only for a company but also for multiple entities to become involved. Such entities in this context include community sports clubs, which have been the focus of many recent discussions. That is, such studies involve identifying the various social values of athletes who are members of a community sports club who aim to improve their athletic abilities while working for a company as a full-time worker.
     To fulfill these goals, it is not enough for Japan’s sporting world to extend support solely for competitive sports; it should also consider providing support for athletes so that they can enter the workforce while also demanding improved laws and systems pertaining to labor environments, wages, and the taxation system, thereby constructing mechanisms for providing athletes with incentives. Therefore, the ideal labor environments and employment models for Japan’s athletes must be discussed as an area within “sports labor studies”.
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  • Based on the Researches in Sport Sociology
    Tatsuya MORIYAMA
    2009 Volume 17 Issue 2 Pages 65-75
    Published: September 30, 2009
    Released on J-STAGE: October 05, 2016
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
     This paper is focused on analyses of the sensuous dimensions of bodies. In contemporary body studies, there has been a significant amount of research on issues of performance. Among those studies, I am specifically focusing on those projects where researchers actually master the performances that they are studying. In this paper, I call such research “practical performance studies” and examine not only their significance, but also how performers/researchers acquire and understand their body feeling from their performance. The critics whom I refer to in this paper are L.D. Wacquant, who studies boxing, G. Downey who studies capoeira, and E. Bar-On Cohen who studies karate. In this paper, I compare the perspectives of these three theorists with the arguments of Bourdieu in order to examine the possibilities of a theory of bodies that pays attention to the sensuous dimensions of the body. Downey and Bar-On Cohen phenomenologically describe processes of practice that are not effectively explained by Bourdieu’s notion of habitus. Wacquant intrinsically describes how symbolic power is operating at the sensuous dimensions of the body. I conclude that these practical performance studies are significant in the following three ways. First, this research complements some of the blind points of Bourdieu’s theoretical perspective. Second, these researchers describe the construction of sensual reality. Third, they offer us a new methodological approach for understanding human performance.
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  • Focusing on “ranking” function
    Masashi TAKAI
    2009 Volume 17 Issue 2 Pages 77-88
    Published: September 30, 2009
    Released on J-STAGE: October 05, 2016
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
     For several decades, doping has been a major issue in the world of sports. The problem is most often debated from an ethical perspective. In contrast, this paper does not discuss whether doping is right or wrong. Instead, we consider the influence of doping on society, based on the “ranking” function of sport in modern times.
     Omura [2004] has pointed out that, through its culture of aggressive competition, sport “agitates” people, while at the same time sport has a “calming” function, by making people aware of the limits of their abilities. However, in the case of top athletes, the “ranking” function of sport is stronger than its “calming” function.
     An athlete’s agency and sense of responsibility for the results of his or her own performance is supported by a naive assumption about the dualism between the natural and the artificial, as well as that athlete’s sense of dominion over his or her own body. However, if doping is permitted, the athlete’s responsibility shifts to an external “cause,” which makes it difficult for the “ranking” function of sport to exist.
     In recent years genetic doping has subverted the concept of the body as “natural,” and it has strengthened the position of athletes vis-à-vis athletic governing bodies. On the other hand, as the regulation of doping and strength of governing institutions increase, we see athletes losing their sense of responsibility for their own bodies. Overall, rather than seeing an “equilibrium” or “common purpose” between athletes and governing bodies, they are being split into opposing factions. As a result, modern sport loses its “ranking” function for top athletes, and they can no longer recognize their limits.
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  • By Focusing on the Function of Rugby World Cup
    Tsuyoshi MATSUSHIMA
    2009 Volume 17 Issue 2 Pages 89-100
    Published: September 30, 2009
    Released on J-STAGE: October 05, 2016
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
     By 1970, Rugby union football had been spread throughout the world and several international rugby institutions were established. At this time, International Rugby Board(IRB) rapidly move towards ‘opening’ and unification of different international rugby institutions. The focus of this paper is the Rugby World Cup(RWC), which has been held every four years since 1987, and illustrates the changes that occurred during the unification period.
     The author shall describe how IRB used RWC as the sole controller to reorganize and integrate the rugby institutions at global level. This analysis stems from the careful reading of the memorandums of meetings on the RWC during the unification period.
     The following facts became clear as a result of this study. Firstly, with commercialization of rugby beginning in the 1970s, the IRB developed policies regarding such things as the global promotion and development of rugby, which led to the tense relation between IRB and other global institution such as Federation International De Rugby Amateur over the control of the global governing rights for rugby. Secondly, while the IRB strengthened its efforts to exclude〈non-rugby〉elements, the RWC became a means to subsume unions that were not members of the IRB. Lastly, the development of RWC was accompanied by the establishment of the IRB as a ‘global’ decision-making body for rugby and its increased corporatization. The re-organized IRB began to control the rugby code on global scale through its international promotion and development of rugby, as well its increasing commercialization of rugby.
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