[Special Feature: Youth and Sports] The Future of the "Athletic Association Type"—On the Independence and Autonomy of Young Athletes

2020/03/05

The experience of sports itself does not directly lead to actions aimed at achieving justice, freedom, and equality in society. Nor are the independence and autonomy essential for such actions naturally cultivated simply by playing sports. One cannot help but think this way when hearing media reports showing that sports have become sites of corporal punishment, violence, sexual violence, and an excessive obsession with winning.

On the other hand, one sometimes senses a nuance of "even though it's sports" in these media reports. It seems that a simplistic understanding of "sports = educational" has been formed before we knew it. The issue should not be whether one plays sports or not, but how one plays sports.

When and how did the understanding that sports have educational value originate in the first place?

In 18th and 19th century Britain, a distinction was made between outdoor pastimes that had been enjoyed as entertainment, such as hunting, shooting, fishing, and yachting, and organized games such as cricket, football, and tennis. Distinctions based on the social class of those enjoying them, distinctions based on what educational value they held...

In the early 19th century, outdoor pastimes were considered entertainment for the upper class. The reason given was that they fostered the ability to respond to unexpected changes in circumstances. They were seen as entertainment through which the essential skills of a gentleman could be acquired.

In the late 19th century, debates regarding the merits of organized games filled the correspondence columns of The Times. During this period, children of the rising middle class began to study at public schools, and organized games that involved rules and teams were growing in popularity among students. Concerned by this, public school graduates from upper-class backgrounds sought to draw a line and rank their familiar outdoor pastimes against organized games.

Defenders of organized games fought back, but there was no monolithic understanding even within the organized games side. It is said that upper-class and rising middle-class people were less willing to accept football, which was also enjoyed by country children and laborers, compared to cricket.

No matter how much the "upper-class" nature of outdoor pastimes was emphasized, the fun of organized games undoubtedly attracted young people. Those who defended organized games sought to raise their rank by emphasizing that these activities had educational value for acquiring the character and morality suitable for leaders of Western society heading into the 20th century. In Thomas Hughes's masterpiece "Tom Brown's School Days" (1857), which depicts school life at a public school, conversations valuing cricket educationally appear throughout.

For example, team victory based on discipline and mutual trust was seen as an opportunity to foster leadership qualities because it required effort accompanied by a readiness for self-sacrifice, more so than individual sports where one only aims for their own victory. Furthermore, the spirit of showing courtesy to opponents while doing one's best to win to the limit, and not losing composure or generosity toward the results, was considered a virtue cultivated by the game.

According to research by Ikuo Abe, who traced how the translations of "sport" and "sportsman" changed in English-Japanese dictionaries, the first appearance of a translation for "sport" was "nagusami" (pastime) in the 1814 "Angeria Gorin Taisei." Later, it was the "Inoue's English-Japanese Dictionary" (1915) that applied a translation understood as a word more strongly related to "competition" in addition to outdoor activities like fishing and hunting. Abe points out that this understanding of the word was influenced by the fact that the dictionary's compiler, Jukichi Inoue, was a graduate of Rugby School, one of the public schools. Following this dictionary, Yoshisaburo Okakura's "New English-Japanese Dictionary" added an ethical nuance to the translation of "sportsman" as a person who understands the spirit of competition. Around 1927, when this dictionary was published, sports organizations overseeing competitions such as swimming and track and field were established in Japan, and competitive sports became established.

Tracing these transitions of meaning in dictionaries, one can see traces of attempts to give educational meaning to sports as entertainment and to rehabilitate them in Japan from the end of the 19th century to the 20th century.

The tone of Japan's first sports magazine, "Undokai" (The Sporting World), published for nearly three years starting in July 1897, is one clear example. This magazine enthusiastically published works asserting the educational value of sports, emphasizing that those who play sports are individuals with physical strength, bravery, and freedom from sexual disorder. Furthermore, it frequently used a context to enhance the value of sports by placing "literature" or "effeminacy" as the polar opposite of sports and giving them negative meanings such as physical weakness or internal frailty.

There is another example. For about a month starting in August 1911, the Asahi Shimbun ran a series of articles titled "Baseball and Its Evils." In the series, famous educators and medical sciences experts argued how unsuitable baseball was for students, who were the elite of society at the time. Around this time, while the Waseda-Keio rivalry began to heat up, meetings of school principals and others began to perceive sports as a "harmful influence" in educational institutions. The series of articles denouncing baseball came into direct conflict with baseball enthusiasts. In the writing battle that came to be known as the "Baseball Evil Debate," the method taken by enthusiasts was to argue that baseball had educational value and excellent influences that could overturn the educational and medical sciences opposition.

Pierre de Coubertin is a figure who must not be forgotten as someone who focused on the educational value of sports. Coubertin visited the aforementioned public schools and witnessed sports education there. Additionally, he focused on the fact that the people of ancient Greece valued sports as an activity to draw closer to the gods. However, team events did not exist in the ancient Olympic Games.

Coubertin's vision for the Olympics belonged to an era when various countries were beginning to establish school education systems. His idea was innovative in that he not only found educational value in sports, which had been nothing more than entertainment, but also sought to raise the youth of the 20th century beyond the framework of each country's school education system.

Despite inspecting public schools where team sports like cricket were popular, Coubertin emphasized individual sports, much like in the ancient Greek era. Many of the words he left in his writings reflect a mentality that anyone who has engaged in sports can imagine. They help us understand why he emphasized individual sports.

For example, there is a sentence from a 1919 letter addressed to the members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC): "Through competition, one can learn to perceive things analytically, think critically, control oneself, make planned efforts and energy expenditures, take actual action, and apply failures to the next attempt... These can be learned through competition." In 1931, after stepping down from the IOC, he stated, "To know oneself, to discipline oneself, to overcome oneself—this is the duty and essence of an athlete."

From these words, we can see that Coubertin's perspective was applied to the qualities required as an individual, and he believed that sports had the potential to cultivate them.

In September 2019, the 70th Conference of the Japan Society of Physical Education, Health and Sport Sciences was held at Keio University. The conference organizing committee planned a symposium titled "Physical Education and Sports in a Society that Values Independent and Autonomous Individuals: Seeking Clues in Yukichi Fukuzawa and His Era." One of the reports there was by Keita Yamauchi, a professor at Keio University and a member of the Fukuzawa Memorial Center for Modern Japanese Studies. Professor Yamauchi depicted how Yukichi Fukuzawa's view of education at Keio University, which was opened with the aim of fostering modern individuals, was carried on by Shinzo Koizumi through Koizumi's view of sports. Additionally, Takeyuki Tokura, an associate professor at the Fukuzawa Memorial Center, focused on sports among the historical materials collected by the "Keio University and the War" Archive Project, interpreting how students received the thoughts of Yukichi Fukuzawa and Shinzo Koizumi. Both were valuable reports that were possible precisely because the venue was Keio University.

Shinzo Koizumi's view of sports is concentrated in the essay collection "Practice Makes the Impossible Possible" (Keio University Press, 2004), edited by Professor Yamauchi and others. In the essays, many mentions are found regarding the state of the individual cultivated by sports, and elements that resonate with Coubertin can be felt. For example, the sentence: "Should it not be possible to say that the ability to not avoid difficulties, not fear danger, say what one believes, and do what one says is also naturally enhanced through practice?" ("Life and Practice"). This suggests that the development of the team and society as a collective is predicated on the state of the individual.

Another commonality between Coubertin and Shinzo Koizumi can be read from the essay collection. It is that they both emphasized approaching sports with a scientific and theoretical attitude. There, one does not see excessive spiritualism or oppressive instructors.

While people were becoming obsessed with sports, in order to be recognized and established in society, sports needed to be something educational, not just mere entertainment or "nagusami." This was the same in Britain, considered one of the birthplaces of modern sports, and in Japan, which received sports from overseas. The reason the Olympics have continued and maintained a value different from other sporting events while transforming under criticism and changes in social conditions is that they did not let go of Coubertin's educational philosophy. For the development of the Athletic Association at Keio University, the process in which the educational philosophy since the school's opening was transferred to sports by Koizumi was indispensable.

The fact that sports cannot be recognized by society simply by being enjoyed purely is, in a sense, a sorrow for sports. Conversely, sports were given the character of a vessel for the educational values required within the era and society.

Because of this destiny that sports carry, athletes are sometimes forced to deal with two things. One is related to victory. As long as it is a sport, athletes aim for victory. The gears of what should be a natural activity go awry, and the situation falls into what is called victory-at-all-costs, often when the expectations for victory from instructors or spectators are forced upon the athletes. The other is the imposition of educational elements that are considered ideal within the era or society.

Caught between these two impositions, can athletes truly grow as independent and autonomous human beings?

The term "Athletic Association type" (taiiku-kai-kei) refers to people who are recognized by themselves and others as having been close to sports. While this term includes positive evaluations such as being polite, cheerful, and not perceiving things negatively, it also evokes an image of a person who matches the old Japanese-style corporate culture. The latter is said to value spiritualism and grit, and to fit into top-down organizations.

Someone once commented, "The cooperativeness required in sports is a tricky thing." Reading the air, not resisting, conforming, and acting according to instructions... Is it not possible that the two impositions mentioned earlier might foster such young people? Expressions by instructors such as "making the athlete better" or "making them win" do not fit the educational views of Coubertin or Koizumi, who saw the potential for sports to elevate the individual.

While victory and education cannot be separated from sports, there is a need to generate sports environments that foster independent and autonomous human beings without imposing either. While athletes as individuals discard the various "should-be" arguments—that they should win, should be educational, and so on—they still aim for victory and discipline their minds and bodies to move dynamically in a free world with no right answers... When the sports environment is prepared as such a place, the "Athletic Association type" may be able to acquire a future as a term signifying a new image of humanity.