This is a study on the way children viewed and treated as outsiders are included socially within combative sports dojo in Tokyo. The objective of this study is to analyze and reveal how combative sport dojo embrace "os-tracized" kids such as delinquent juvenile, the bullied, and truant students, empower them and help them return to social institutions such as schools and workplaces. Previous studies show that combative sports gyms play roles of social inclusion; however, few studies are done on the process of returning to the society. The viewpoint of "social inclusion," (from Ikemoto’s study in 2009) seems to be the only one that analyzes the people who have already been included in the society. This study focuses on children in need of social inclusion: how dojo motivation trans-forms them into someone who "fits" into schools or other social settings such as workplace or as professional ath-letes. The initial trigger for them was the desire to become strong, however this study reveals how that affects their full transformation. The methods used for this study are: instructing the kids in the dojo, doing extensive fieldwork as a resident counselor at schools in a specific region inside Tokyo from 2002 until March 2009; and as an advisor for the development of young people from then on until March 2017. The author has spent a great amount of time with the children in schools and dojo, and this has enabled him to capture the full picture of each child’s life, in-cluding their family backgrounds. A number of interviews were conducted not just with the children but also with the teachers and parents in order to prevent inevitable personal biases that arise from merely spending time with the children in one-on-one environment. In order to build a rapport with the kids, the author attended and partici-pated in the local events such as ‘mochi-tsuki’ (pounding boiled rice into soft, gelatinous cakes), harvesting bam-boo shoots, fireworks and other festivals.
There are a total of over 200 children attending the dojo in a span of 12 years, there has been a wide variety of races, cultures, and individual personalities, ranging from hyper to lethargic with each of them having their own reasons to visit the dojo. The author analyzes these personality types and notes their traits respectively within the research document. For example, children that have hyper personalities are usually the ones labeled as "delinquent" and they have a high possibility of becoming involved in violence. Children who are lethargic and labeled as dis-interested or under achievers, on the other hand, were often the bullied and are generally truant students. Most of the hyper children saw the strength in combative sports as strength in physical fights, and this was the most com-mon initial reason that they attended the dojo to begin with: They aspired for superiority in physical fights through training in the dojo. Their aspirations for strength were varied, ultimately boiling down to be respected and over-coming an inferiority complex, professional athletes, or simply recognized as a cultural view of masculine. Many of them displayed exhibitionistic tendencies and it was found over the span of time with them that this was due to an attraction to heroic figures, especially those of combative athletes. However, while there were several success-es it should be noted that some of the "hyper" personality type children voluntarily refused to be included in the dojo and they chose to leave. The children viewed as lethargic, on the other hand, learned to be patient and to be easy-going with small trifles and not to panic and shut down. Seemingly, they were also encouraged by watching their peers become strong by training in combative sports.
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