This article presents the results of research designed to explore the coach dispatch programme which was conducted by the committee of the Japan Gymnastics Association to promote men′s rhythmic gymnastics outside Japan. Although men′s rhythmic gymnastics has been developed for over fifty years in Japan, the existence of this sport has been endangered since around 2001, when global success came to be considered essential for every competitive sport. To bring this sport to more athletes and a wider audience, the committee sent top gymnasts to some countries from 2001 to 2006. However, the details of the programme and the reasons why the programme was terminated in 2006 were not publicly recorded. Thus, this article investigates what the representatives accomplished and what problems and future tasks the coaches recognised to identify the structure of the problems that have occurred in the process of the global diffusion of the sport.
    Interview data were analysed according to the principles of the SCAT (Steps for Coding and Theorization) Qualitative Data Analysis Method. Results show that the defects were inherent in their organisation and the programme itself, which were recognised by most of the coaches dispatched, such as lack of close consideration before the programme was set out, and the fact that the coaches were supposed to carry out their mission on a fairly low budget and in an unfamiliar culture, mostly without any support from the committee in Japan. Research indicates that the coach dispatch programme was aborted as a result of a combination of those factors. Additionally, this paper argues that further tasks of the programme suggested by the informants are significantly affected by their understandings of the characteristics of this sport and their philosophy of it.

View full abstract

    This study aims to correlate previous conflicting studies by asking whether the Japanese professional team-sports market can be approximated using the Negative Binomial Distribution (NBD) Dirichlet Model. Results show that the value of speculators’ attendance frequency of each team is equal to the theoretical value affected by the degree of market penetration. The results also reveal that teams which achieved only a negatively divergent low attendance frequency compared with the theoretical value have continued to exist at a constant ratio. Therefore, these findings serve to validate the claim that the two conflicting statements in previous studies are, in fact, not contradictory.

View full abstract

    This study cites “casual racism” as it is suggested in the slogan “Racism. It Stops With Me” and aims to identify the characteristics of racism on Japanese websites that deal with international sporting events. With respect to the 2014 FIFA World Cup, about 670,000 web comments related to “Yahoo! JAPAN” news on the World Cup were collected. Of the comments, 16,236 were sampled, and the 289 comments that included “race-related words” were selected, classified, and evaluated into three types, depending on whether the content was discriminatory. In the analysis, the proportion of discriminatory comments was compared to all comments, and this was compared with year-round sports comments in Japan.
    The results of the analysis showed that approximately 40.1 percent of the 289 comments were discriminatory about people of a different race. There were a particularly large number of comments about Koreans. Discriminatory comments about Chinese and Croatians also appeared although Croatians are rarely discussed in Japan.
    The examination of the comments revealed the following characteristics: 1) Among the comments that were analyzed, the proportion of racially discriminatory comments that were only mentioned at the World Cup was low, at 12.9 percent. This suggests that international competitions are not a direct cause of racism on the web. 2) Discriminatory comments against Croatians arose from the criticisms by the Croatian national team against the Japanese referee of a match played by their country. Therefore, these comments were transient, although this type of casual racism is likely to occur repeatedly in international competitions targeting different racial groups. 3) Racism toward Chinese and Koreans is one of Japan’ s social problems. However, while this racism is considered to be serious, a part of the discriminatory web comments displayed the kind of casualness that is characteristic of casual racism.

View full abstract

    This study compares awareness about doping between Japan, which has less doping cases, and Italy, where doping is widespread, second only to that of Russia. The research sample was comprised of university physical education students. The item “opinion about doping” was divided into a doping item and a sports standards item, and the reliability of the scale was demonstrated by confirming the hypothesis model through structural equation modeling.
  Result 1: The Japanese group had a significantly lower value than the Italian group with regard to awareness of special doping (awareness to justify doping for the success of famous athletes and teams).
  Result 2: Italian students showed significantly stronger negative influences on “the spirit of fair play” and “doping awareness” than Japanese students. A stronger “spirit of fair play” significantly negatively influenced “doping awareness”. Furthermore, the Japanese students showed significantly stronger positive influences on “special doping” and “doping awareness” than Italian students.
    Conclusion: We can conclude the following: (1) Italian university students do not generally approve of doping but tend to approve of doping for the success of famous athletes and teams, whereas Japanese students do not; (2) in Italy, there is a tendency to not approve of general doping, reflecting a higher spirit of fair play; however, in Japan, there is only a weak relation between the spirit of fair play and doping awareness; and (3) the relation between special doping awareness on doping awareness is stronger in Japan than that in Italy.

View full abstract

    The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between experiences of collegiate athletics and fundamental competencies for working persons [“Action”, “Thinking”, and “Teamwork”] in collegiate rugby players, and to clarify the effects of experiences in collegiate athletics on fundamental competencies for working persons. One hundred and thirteen collegiate rugby players completed questionnaires of the Experience Scale in Athletic Clubs (Shimamoto & Ishii, 2008) and Scale of Fundamental Competencies for Working Persons (Kitajima et al., 2011). Analyses using the Pearson’ s correlation coefficients demonstrated the significant correlation between “self-disclosure experience” and “Action”, “Thinking”, and “Teamwork” ; “daily life guidance from leaders experience” and “Teamwork” ; “challenge and achievement experience” and “Thinking”, and “Teamwork” ; “support from others experience” and “Action”, “Thinking”, and “Teamwork” ; “effort and endurance experience” and “Action”, “Thinking”, and “Teamwork”. In addition, the results of multiple regression analysis demonstrated that “self-disclosure experience” affected “Teamwork”, and “support from others experience” and “effort and endurance experience” affected “Action”.

View full abstract

    The sport satellite account (SSA) has been introduced in the EU, and the industrial scale of sports is estimated by the SSA. The purpose of this study was to clarify the methodology of the EU sport satellite account and to discuss the possibility of introducing the sport satellite account in Japan. As a result of this study, it became clear that the European SSA has developed a definition of the sports industry based on classification of products by activity (CPA) and adopted a method of estimating the sports industry based on the numerical value given in the input-output table. It is extremely important to continually estimate the size of the sports industry based on the industrial classification in Japan. This paper clarifies the basic way of making the EU SSA and shows that there is a possibility for the introduction of the SSA in Japan.

View full abstract