Ministry of Education bureaucrats, who write Japan’s sports policy, have actively looked to other nations to find new ideas. Sports policy reforms throughout modern Japanese history have reflected this global outlook, but though they have often been based on foreign policy precedents, they have also been adapted at the grassroots level to fit local Japanese needs. Based on an extensive review of Japanese sports and educational policy documents and observations from long-term (2008-2009) fieldwork with a Tokyo-area private co-educational university basketball club (men’s and women’s teams), as well as fieldwork at the Japan Sports Association’s coach training and certification courses (2009), this chapter argues that some foreign policies that Japan has borrowed have fostered ‘real’ change, while some, especially a recent policy reform aimed at ‘sports for health through science’, have only ‘imagined’ it.
Buy the book here or here. Read my chapter by right-clicking here and selecting “download linked file as”. It is a large .zip file so please be patient while it downloads.
