Japanese Women and Sport: Beyond Baseball and Sumo
Ebook
Overview
This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com.
In ’Japanese Women and Sport’, Robin Kietlinski sets out to problematize the hegemonic image of the delicate Japanese woman, highlighting an overlooked area in the history of modern Japan. Previous studies of gender in the Japanese context do not explore the history of female participation in sport, and recent academic studies of women and sport tend to focus on Western countries.
Kietlinski locates the discussion of Japanese women in sport within a larger East Asian context and considers the socio-economic position and history of modern Japan. Reaching from the early 20th century to the present day, Kietlinski traces the progression of Japanese women’s participation in sport from the first female school for physical education and the foundations of competitive sport through to their growing presence in the Olympics and international sport.
’Japanese Women and Sport’ aims to explore both why and how in the past century athletics have stood out as an arena in which excellence by Japanese women is so actively encouraged.
There have been no English books written on the role of Japanese women in sport thus far
The author is very well-placed to write this book, and has an equal balance of Western and Japanese sources
She has researched at Tsukuba University, the largest and foremost centre for sociological sport studies in Japan
It is written in an academic, yet accessible style, and could be integrated in undergraduate as well as graduate courses
There are a growing number of universities offering sport studies, and the book would cross over for classes in gender in East Asia and Japan.
Table of Contents:
Chapter 1: Introduction: Why Women’s Sport? Why Japan?
Chapter 2: Japanese Sportswomen in Context
Chapter 3: The Road to Participation in Competitive Sport
Chapter 4: From Calisthenics to Competition: Early Participation in International Sport
Chapter 5: From Antipathy to Applause: The Emergence of Female Powerhouses on the International Scene
Chapter 6: Progress and Potential: Sportswomen From Tokyo to Today
Chapter 7: "Affecting the Lives of All of Us": Analyzing Theoretical Issues of Japanese Women in Sport
Afterword: What About Women’s Baseball and Women’s Sumô?
Tables
Bibliography
Robin Kietlinski’s earnest but digestible volume puts the attainments of these athletes in the context of the development of Japanese society over the past 150 or so years, explaining how attitudes to sport, and women’s proper place in it, were gradually transformed. But it was the stories of the women themselves, trailblazers nearly all, that most held my attention.
This book resolves some of the difficulties entailed in researching the history of women’s sports in Japan and provides material for making global comparisons regarding the impact of cultural differences on gender issues in sports...[T]he most significant feature of this book is the time-based analysis of the history of women’s sports in Japan, an Asian country, from a Western cultural perspective...Because of this feature, Japanese readers may experience a sense of discord. It is precisely this feeling, however, that can create the potential for enrichment of historical research on women’s sports in Japan. This cultural difference will provide stimulus to readers who feel a distance between the significance of women’s sports in the history of Asia and Japan and themselves.
This well-written book ... fills a gap in the scholarship on women and sport in Japan - knowledge that has undoubtedly been missing in the past. The book is worthy of the highest praise.
- Title: Japanese Women and Sport: Beyond Baseball and Sumo
- Author: Robin Kietlinski
- Series: Globalizing Sport Studies
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
- Print Publication Date: 2011
- Logos Release Date: 2024
- Pages: 208
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781849666688, 9781472539533, 1472539532, 1849666687
- Resource ID: LLS:9781849666688
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2025-04-22T11:13:44Z
Robin Kietlinski is Adjunct Assistant Professor of History at the City University of New York - Baruch College, and a visiting research scholar at Columbia University's Weatherhead East Asian Institute. She has also served as Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Fordham University in New York City. She holds a Ph.D. and M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, and a B.A. from the University of Chicago, all in East Asian Languages and Civilizations