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This paper reviews the participation of Indian females in international sports over time. Despite representing about half of India's population, female participation in sports, particularly at the international level, has been lower than desired. However, female athletes have achieved significant success in international competitions. The study analyzes the participation and achievements of Indian females in the Commonwealth Games, Asian Games, and Olympic Games. At the Rio Olympics in 2016, India had 120 participants, with 54 males and 66 females, making female representation 45%. At the Tokyo Olympics 2020, women made up 53 of the 121 participants, securing 3 out of India's 7 medals (approximately 43%), including one silver and two bronze. The Tokyo Paralympics 2020 was India's most successful, with 19 medals (5 – gold, 8 – silver, and 6 – bronze). Female athletes also excelled, with Bhavina Patel winning India's first Paralympic medal in table tennis, and shooter Avani Lekhara becoming the first Indian woman to win a gold medal and multiple medals in the Paralympics. The analysis shows that sports like archery and badminton have higher female participation, while athletics, golf, shooting, and wrestling have more male participants. There is no female representation in judo, rowing, and boxing, and no male representation in gymnastics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the popular post-war boys' baseball manga Kyojin no Hoshi, to highlight how pre-war militaristic values were carried over into post-war Japanese sports. Militarism in pre-war Japan was underpinned by bushidō, a set of beliefs that idealised the values upheld by samurai, and which greatly influenced Japan's pre-war physical education system. While post-war Japan achieved democratisation in many ways, the democratic transformation in sports after the war was much slower. For this reason, elements of military training that were included in sports training prior to the war continued to be emphasised in the post-war era. This article uses examples taken from Star of the Giants to highlight this phenomenon, as well as the broader connection between manga and cultural context. It also touches upon cultural representations of fathers and the male gender in post-war Japanese boys' fiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japanese educational institutions remain the country's prominent football culture exponents since its emergence in higher education extra-curricular activities during the late nineteenth century. In Britain, whilst professional football culture evolved rapidly following the sport's re-organisation in English public schools; Japan maintained a prolonged period of amateurism, which endured until establishing the professional J. League in 1992. After its acceptance as a physical education activity, football slowly circulated from extra-curricular activities at higher educational schools to secondary and elementary schools. From the introductory period to establishing the Japanese professional football league, football cemented its relationship with education, with university clubs dominating nationwide competitions and their prominent involvement in the Japanese national team. Also, despite the establishment of professionalism, educational institutions continue to significantly influence football culture throughout the country in terms of both the recruitment of players and the game's ethics. In particular, the efficacy of extra-curricular activities as a medium for Japanese youths' moral education and the cultural significance such institutions continue to retain are contributing factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to examine how the acting events of the First Japan Recreation Congress (JRC) were adopted by tracking the organizing process, focusing on trends in Isomura's view of Kosei and the Memorial Division. The study focused on the Shimin Kosei Sumo Taikai (sumo tournament), Shimin Kosei Nanshiki Yakyu Taikai (Japanese-style baseball tournament), and Fujin Kosei no Yube (gymnastics, Japanese archery, dance, march, music, entertainment). Initially, the Memorial Division, centered on Isomura and Tanigawa, was expected within the Tokyo city hall. However, after the Tokyo Olympics and the World Expo were returned or postponed, the Memorial Division remained irrelevant. The Memorial Division was also criticized for its survival within Tokyo city hall. However, the Memorial Division continued its activities. The Memorial Division i) devised the Chokoku seishin senyo undo as an alternative project for the Tokyo Olympics and the World Expo, ii) recognized the importance of the Kosei Undo (recreation movement) as part of the Chokoku seishin senyo undo, and c) positioned the First JRC as a platform for promoting and developing the Kosei Undo in Tokyo City. Accordingly, the format of the First JRC changed significantly from an independent holding of the Japan Recreation Association (JRA) and Tokyo City. Subsequently, Shimin Kosei Sumo Taikai, Shimin Kosei Nanshiki Yakyu Taikai, and Fujin Kosei no Yube were adopted as acting events. The 3 acting events reflected Isomura's view of Kosei, which defines the purpose of the Kosei Undo as "improvement of human resources" and its system as knowledge, virtue, and body, and the plan of the commemorative division. To summarize, Shimin Kosei Sumo Taikai, Shimin Kosei Nanshiki Yakyu Taikai, and Fujin Kosei no Yube were adopted as acting events in the First JRC by Isomura, in response to the project of the Memorial Division that had lost their original purpose. Isomura's response is based on his perspective of Kosei. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In this article, we examine philosophy of sport as a field of study in Japan, its history, characteristics, and future prospects, as part of a contribution to the international development of the discipline of sport philosophy. The Japan Society for the Philosophy of Sport and Physical Education has been holding an annual sport philosophy conference every year since its inception in 1978. Nevertheless, the trends of sport philosophy in Japan have not been conveyed abroad. The language barrier between Japanese and English as an international communication tool makes it difficult to spread our work on the philosophy of sport throughout the world. The question arises as to whether the philosophy of sport in Japan has the same trends as those in the Western countries. Is it reasonable to assume that it has different aspects and interests than philosophy of sport in English-speaking countries? We will also try to address these questions for our audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After a radical conversion of the old Okinawan, anti-samurai martial art toti in the 1920s, a new, in effect Japanese modern combat sport, karate, came into being. The very first karate sports contest already took place in 1930. But, at the end of 1950s, karate started to be exported to the Western world as a traditional martial art of Japanese samurai, even if the samurai had not known karate. That then already omnipresent doctrine has allowed no other perception despite the fact that, globally, the prevalent phenomenon in the field has been karate sports contests in bouts and katas. Exposing the concept of karate as a traditional martial art to be an unhistoric, artificial ideological superstructure, this study is based on more than 50 years of accumulated scepticism of the author that has been confirmed through communication with students of various karate styles and the evaluation of several publications and studies. It is hoped that the findings of this basic study will encourage the sports scientific community to favor further research directed to indisputable and unambiguous explanation of karate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 striking Tokyo city was one of the largest scale disasters in the history of Japan. This paper aims to explore how Tokyo city utilized sport in the recovery process from the catastrophe by analyzing historical documents. Special focus is centred on the sport administration in the Tokyo municipal office and specific sport events held during 1923–1930. The findings are that the Social Education Division expanded the sport-related policy for moving forward with the disaster recovery. In particular, the sport events were held to comfort victims in temporary shelters, promote citizen’s vigour and physical fitness, celebrate the recovery completion and express gratitude to those who contributed to the recovery. Even in the 1920s, the early period of sport in Japan, sport events might have taken particular roles in accordance with the post-disaster phases. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

All of the four Japanese sporting tours to Australia in the inter-war period are now largely forgotten. This article examines each of these tours – in swimming in 1926–27 and again in 1934–35, rugby in 1927 and tennis in 1932 – in order to further historic understandings of Australian-Japanese sporting connections and to augment existing knowledge of constructive engagements between the two nations in this period. Based mainly on press reports, the article aims to situate the tours within sporting and political contexts, consider positive responses to the tourists as cultural ambassadors, and assess how these visits simultaneously contributed to and challenged racial discourses, stereotypes and anxieties. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The peripheral status of Asian football in the world's global order is rooted in the historical experience of military, political and economic dominance of the West. Since football reached the Far East at a time when European colonialism was giving way to growing US American influence in the region, it never acquired significant meaning in the relationship between the West and the East. However, within the post-colonial world of the North Pacific, football has become a powerful cultural resource for the purpose of representation over the past decades. This essay examines the way in which football has been appropriated by Japan, as well as by its former colonies Korea and China, to express and negotiate ideas of identity, power, status and global norms in international relations. Particular attention will be given to the Japan/Korea World Cup 2002 and other regional tournaments, the emerging media discourses, and new political formations initiated by parliamentarians and bureaucrats from the North Pacific. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By examining muscular Christianity and its legacies, with particular attention to history's twilight zone, we can add to the genealogy of contemporary politics in unexpected ways, and unsettle our sense of contemporary institutions. This essay examines the history of the present, seeking insight into decolonization and postcoloniality via a study of baseball in the Caribbean. It looks at the relations between the region and Organized Baseball with a focus on how Organized Baseball manages its relationships in the new world order, challenging the narrative that US citizens brought baseball to the Caribbean and that Caribbean players and teams hoped some day to catch up to US leadership. Baseball in the Caribbean provides an excellent ground for observing the impact of the US-led new world order on complex social relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tracing the unexpected influence of Thomas Hughes and Charles Kingsley in Japan, this paper explores the role muscular Christian ideas played in shaping Japanese attitudes toward sports and modernity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Taking over ideas brought by Western teachers and missionaries, Japanese Christians in the era of imperialism actively sought to counter Japan's narrow nationalism through hybridization of ‘traditional’ Bushido with muscular Christian ideology. While the nationalists won the struggle in the 1920s and 1930s, today's secularized notion of sportsmanship is shown to be a creation of the Japanese muscular Christians through their hybridization efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Keywords: Asia Pacific Journal; Japan; Asia Pacific; Pacific Rim; Asia; East Asia; Northeast Asia; Southeast Asia; Southwest Asia; South Asia; Contemporary Japan; Contemporary Asia Pacific; Contemporary East Asia; US-Japan relations; US-China-Japan-Korea relations; Japan-East Asian Relations; Japan-Northeast Asian Relations; Japan-Pacific Relations; Japan-Southeast Asian Relations; Japan-Middle East Relations; Japan-Central Asia Relations; Japan-South Asia Relations; Japan-European Relations; Okinawa Most people see the 2020 Tokyo Olympics as the second Olympics in Tokyo, and some are hoping that the economic miracle and social transformation symbolized by the "first" Olympics of 1964 will be repeated. However, Japan started a war with China in 1937, which strained its relationship with the Western Allies, and in this context, both the Olympics and the World's Fair became impossible. Asia Pacific Journal, Japan, Asia Pacific, Pacific Rim, Asia, East Asia, Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, Southwest Asia, South Asia, Contemporary Japan, Contemporary Asia Pacific, Contemporary East Asia, US-Japan relations, US-China-Japan-Korea relations, Japan-East Asian Relations, Japan-Northeast Asian Relations, Japan-Pacific Relations, Japan-Southeast Asian Relations, Japan-Middle East Relations, Japan-Central Asia Relations, Japan-South Asia Relations, Japan-European Relations, Okinawa. [Extracted from the article]