Sport, Memory and Nationhood in Japan

Remembering the Glory Days

Andreas Niehaus, Christian Tagsold

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781138116863
• eBook ISBN: 9781135712235
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book clarifies and verifies the role sport has as an alternative marker in understanding and mapping memory in Japan, by applying the concept of lieux de mémoire (realms of memory) to sport in Japan. Japanese history and national construction have not been short of sports landmarks since the end of the nineteenth century. Western-style sports were introduced into Japan in order to modernize the country and develop a culture of consciousness about bodies resembling that of the Western world. Japan's modernization has been a process of embracing Western thought and culture while at the same time attempting to establish what distinguishes Japan from the West. In this context, sports functioned as sites of contested identities and memories. The Olympics, baseball and soccer have produced memories in Japan, but so too have martial arts, which by their very name signify an attempt to create traditions beyond Western sports. Because modern sports form bodies of modern citizens and, at the same time, offer countless opportunities for competition with other nations, they provide an excellent ground for testing and contesting national identifications. By revealing some of the key realms of memory in the Japanese field of sports, this book shows how memories and counter-memories of (sport) moments, places, and heroes constitute an inventory for identity.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Sport in Society.

Introduction

Remembering the glory days of the nation: sport as lieu de mémoire in Japan

Andreas Niehaus^a and Christian Tagsold^b

^aInstitute of Japanese Language and Culture, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium; ^bDepartment of Japanese Studies, Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf, Germany

The French historian Pierre Nora introduced the theoretical framework for mapping lieux de mémoire, the places of remembrance that shape both our knowledge of history and our history-shaped identities.¹ The concept has been used to describe inventories of memory for different countries in the last two decades.² Nora’s work was translated into Japanese in 2002/03, and several publications concerning Japanese realms of memory in Japanese as well as in English subsequently followed. The publications on memory in Japan so far focus on war and war responsibility. But the Japanese lieux de mémoire are certainly not limited exclusively to these issues, as Sven Saaler and Wolfgang Schwentker have suggested.³ By applying the concept of lieux de mémoire to sport in Japan, this issue hopes to clarify and verify the role sport has as an alternative marker in understanding and mapping memory in Japan.

Japanese history and national construction has been full of sports landmarks since the end of the nineteenth century. Western-style sports were introduced into Japan in order to modernize the country and develop a culture of consciousness about bodies resembling that of the Western world. Japan’s modernization has been a process of embracing Western thought and culture while at the same time attempting to establish what distinguishes Japan from the West. In this context, sports functioned as sites of contested identities and memories. The Olympics, baseball and soccer have produced memories in Japan, but so too have the martial arts, which by their very name signify an attempt to create traditions beyond Western sports. Modes of memory in Japan act in two ways: they are engaged in trying to ascertain Japan’s place in modernity, while simultaneously asserting her singularity against the West. Because modern sports form bodies of modern citizens and at the same time offer countless opportunities for competition with other nations, they provide an excellent ground for testing and contesting national identifications. But it is not only international competition that serves as a lieu de mémoire in sports. National tournaments, which begin with local competition then proceeded to regional and finally national elimination rounds, have also been influential in shaping the conception of national territory, just as the Tour de France, for example, has served to shape the domestic conception of France.⁴

In analysing the realms of memory in Japanese sports, five dimensions serve as focal points: identity, tradition, body, commodification and irony. The first four of these dimensions prove that realms of memory are closely linked with the transformation of Japan into a nation state since the mid-nineteenth century. Sport played a vital role in defining what this very word, ‘Japan’, might mean, as well as in defining Japan as ‘something’ modern. The fifth dimension of irony is beyond modernity expressing a postmodern condition. To support the five dimensions with examples from the world of sports, this Introduction will focus on budō (martial arts), a topic that is rather underrepresented in this issue. In budō, there is a certain tension between sports, modernity, self and building a nation state in Japan. The double classification as martial arts and sport reflects this. This very tension, based on realms of memory, is a hint that the application of realms of memory to a non-Western nation may result in complex visions of self and other, entering liminal realms between the two. Budō is also a good example for demonstrating the modes by which memory and sport overlap. First, there is the memory of sport and its events. Sports events, festivities, teams and heroes serve best for this type of realm of memory. Second, sport takes up external realms of memory to legitimize or sell itself. The idea of the samurai would be one such realm of memory – twisted as it is – that has been taken up in the field of sports to legitimize and expand its own logic.

Identity

‘Identity’ is one of the key terms in analysing the processes of emerging nations. Sport is an important factor in not only representing, but also forming national–cultural identity. Sport and the training of bodies have been one means of making ‘Japanese out of peasants’, to modify Eugen Weber’s phrase ‘making Frenchman out of peasants’.⁵ This can be exemplified by Japanese martial arts, as they are closely connected to the construction of ‘Japaneseness’.⁶ The Budo Charter (Budō Kenshō), first published by the Japanese Budo Association in 1987, reads: ‘Modern Japanese have inherited traditional values through budō which continue to play a significant role in the formation of the Japanese personality, serving as sources of boundless energy and rejuvenation’.⁷ Budō is perceived here as the embodiment of ‘what is most noble, honorable, and unique in Japanese culture’, as a place in which ‘the heart of the Japanese beats loudest’.⁸ Stereotypical assignments of Japaneseness are a result of a Western Orientalist discourse to the same degree as they are a result of self-Orientalization. Also judo, invented as ‘modern’ in the Meiji period (1868–1912) and later re-invented as ‘traditional’, serves as a focal point of Japaneseness. The idea of judo is connected to the construction of a ‘timeless’ identity that is endangered by every change, as becomes evident in the following quote from the Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun on 15 November 2008: ‘Has the Japaneseness inherent in judo been stripped away to accommodate forms of judo that do not adhere as closely to its traditions?’ Modernity and history, nostalgia and progress are twisted like a Moebius strip if we go back into history and look at the founder of judo, KanōJigorō, in whom the Moebius strip has its end and beginning.

The idea that certain sports are creations and creators of Japanese national–cultural traits can be found at the beginning of the introduction of sport as early as the Meiji period. However, there is a difference in the nature of how ‘Japaneseness’ is supposed to be expressed in and through certain sports. Some sports – such as kendo, judo, karate and sumo – are considered more suitable for harbouring the traits of the national–cultural character than others. The qualities of the national–cultural character are seen as intrinsic to these sports, whereas the embodiment of a national–cultural character in other sports, especially sports that have been imported, is considered to be extrinsic; golf and baseball, from this perspective, fit the Japanese character because a club (samurai club) and bat are simply seen as a substitute for the Japanese sword in both sports. In the case of baseball, the pitcher–batter duel is symbolically transferred to a pre-modern duel situation between warriors or a battlefield situation. This common trait in constructing identity can be characterized as ‘samuraization’ ,⁹ and the notion of ‘making Japanese out of peasants’ can be substituted by ‘making samurai out of peasants’, therefore hinting at the imperialistic and militaristic value of sport for the emerging nation state of Japan. The idea of the samurai helps to reconcile modern sports, nostalgia, self and other, history and memory. The morphological and semantic level of ‘talking sports’ is overloaded with martial terminology, and in this respect, sport is a suitable medium to disseminate what is perceived as ‘samurai ethics’. In the discourse, the samurai embodies the essence of male Japaneseness.

Body

Samuraization and the emphasis on budō is not just a discursive realm of memory. Beginning in the second half of the Meiji period, peasants, fisherman, merchants and women were obliged to train their bodies in school as if they were samurai. This not only involved a readiness for defence and a definition of what is Japanese, but also created embodied identities by setting oneself apart from the ‘other’ ; these embodied identities later served as material for realms of memory. Nora introduced the body into his discussion of lieux de mémoire as ‘true memory’, which ‘has taken refuge in gestures and habits, in skills passed down by unspoken traditions, in the body’s inherent self-knowledge, in unstudied reflexes and ingrained memories [… ]’.¹⁰ Nora remains vague in his definition of what ‘true memory’ is, but he distinctively locates it in body techniques and habitual practice. The body becomes a container of memory, and because of its historicity, which adds a symbolic and ritual dimension to the physical nature of the body, it also serves as a lieu de mémoire. History is leaving its inscriptions on the body, forming it as a social and cultural reality, but that ‘inscription’ is representation and production at the same time.¹¹ The body is a product of society as much as it is producing society.

Budō forms bodies in many ways and fills them with memories of what is Japanese. A statement in the conservative Sankei magazine Seiron given by Nishihara Masashi, President of the Research Institute for Peace and Security, is characteristic of the discourse on the Japaneseness of certain body techniques: ‘Japanese national sports like judo, kendo and sumo emphasize courtesy (reisetsu)’ and ‘their essence is that they start with courtesy and end with courtesy (rei ni hajimari, rei ni owaru)’. Accordingly, Nishihara concludes that ‘it is against the essence (shinzui), when a Japanese athlete shows the guts pose’.¹² The ‘guts pose’ (gattsu pōzu, winning pose), coined in bowling and later a trademark of the boxer Guts Ishimatsu, is the conceived ‘other’ of the Japanese habitus. Asashōryū, a Mongolian-born sumo fighter of the highest rank, Yokozuna, has been often criticized for not showing the correct, that is, traditional and courteous Japanese spirit – he has not only used the guts pose, but also displayed aggressive behaviour, for example, when he shoved his opponent Hakuhō in 2008. The construction of ‘traditional’ body techniques (or sports) that are solemnly and exclusively owned by an ‘imagined community’ means that these cannot be learned by anyone who is defined as the ‘other’. This refers to the body techniques as well as to the appropriate social and moral conduct these body techniques represent.

Beyond bodies practising and competing in sports, there is another layer of analysis in which the body is incorporating memory. Sport events attract many people and help to spread identity. They are, in essence, ritualistic performances and often commemorative as well. Sumo tournaments, for example, imply continuity with the past insofar as they have been staged as national events for decades. Fighters, commentators and spectators share memories of past tournaments, and each new winner is only the successor in a long line of heroes and will be replaced in the near future. Nora saw commemorative performances as lieux de mémoire, but it must be stressed that these ceremonies are in essence performative, and performative memory is necessarily corporeal.¹³

Tradition and nostalgia

National–cultural identity formation relies greatly on traditions, which are artificial and interpretative constructions created by and existing through modernity. However, when the attributes ‘tradition’ or ‘traditional’ are used in terms like ‘traditional body techniques’, ‘traditional sport’, ‘traditional culture’, they are generally understood as entities that are separa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Series pages
• 1. Introduction: Remembering the glory days of the nation: sport as lieu de mémoire in Japan
• 2. Lieux de mémoire/sites of memories and the Olympic Games: an introduction
• 3. Swimming into memory: the Los Angeles Olympics (1932) as Japanese lieu de mémoire
• 4. Remember to get back on your feet quickly: the Japanese women’s volleyball team at the 1964 Olympics as a ‘Realm of Memory’
• 5. One world one dream? Twenty-first century Japanese perspectives on hosting the Olympic Games
• 6. Tokyo’s 1964 Olympic design as a ‘realm of [design] memory’
• 7. Kōshien Stadium: performing national virtues and regional rivalries in a ‘theatre of sport’
• 8. From national event to local memory – World Cup 2002
• 9. ‘By running… / by fighting… / by dying…’: remembering, glorifying, and forgetting Japanese Olympian war dead
• 10. ‘It was October 1964, when I met the demon for the first time’: Supo-kon manga as lieux de mémoire
• 11. The professional wrestler Rikidōzan as a site of memory
• 12. Sports sites of memory in Japan’s cultures of remembrance and oblivion: collective remembrance is like swimming - in order to stay afloat you have to keep moving
• Index