The overabundance of extracurricular sports activities in Japan has been called into question. Its symbol is the Nippon Junior High School Tournament held by Nippon Junior High School Physical Culture Association. How was this event established? The purpose of this study was to analyze the process by which the tournament was established and to examine the relationship between education and competition in school sports.
Previous studies have sought the reasons for the establishment of the national championships with the relaxation of standards for external competitions in accordance with the demands of sports federations, and have viewed the process as one in which competition disparaged education. This approach assumes that education and competition have a dichotomous relationship that is mutually incompatible, and the conflict between educative egalitarianism and competitive elitism has been viewed as a specific issue.
However, this view does not allow us to understand why the Junior High School Physical Culture Association, which had been trying to suppress the national championships, turned around and held the Nippon Junior High School Tournament. In this study, we reviewed this issue from the perspective of the Junior High School Physical Culture Association, and clarified the active role it played in reorganizing the national championships in order to solve inherent educational problems, while competing with the sports federations that began holding the national championships.
For the Junior High School Physical Culture Association, the process of establishing national championships was not a process in which athletic competition disparaged education, but one in which education was achieved through competition. How did it interpret the conflict between educative egalitarianism and competitive elitism?
The Junior High School Physical Culture Association did not abandon educative egalitarianism while finding significance in competitive elitism. Rather, it placed more emphasis on the former in order to justify the significance of competitive selection. The national championships must be open to all students equally, not just to a few elite athletes, and they were interpreted as meaningful because the winners were selected after all students had participated. In this way, the conflicts between educative egalitarianism and competitive elitism were overcome, and as a result, the Nippon Junior High School Tournament was established. This was a historical turning point in the “overheating” of junior high school sports.
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