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Is the Oriental Notion of “Using Sports to Nurture Guts” Understood in the Globalized World?
Toshiko SUGINO, Noriko OKAMOTO
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DOI:10.17265/2159-5836/2016.11.016
Kogakuin University, Tokyo, Japan Tokyo International University, Tokyo, Japan
In the globalized world, sport exchanges and competitions are held extensively all over the world, international championships and the Olympics to name a few. However, there may be cases where purposes or philosophy behind sport are not necessarily shared in the world. In Japan, for example, not only sports are connected to physical abilities but also to mental strength or more precisely, konjo (guts or strong-wills). This kind of mentality and a training method can be traced back to the Meiji Era (1868-1912) when new European sports were brought to Japan. In the 1960s and 70s, it became a fad to read comic books depicting how poor heroes-to-be painstakingly became famous players mastering skills while nurturing their guts. In the previous study, 39 college students out of 46 felt sports can nurture guts or strong wills even today. However, in the 9th FIEP European Congress in Bulgaria, some participants from the Eastern Europe expressed that this kind of Oriental notion was hard to grasp because it is so different from theirs. In this paper, we will show the results of a questionnaire, administered to 83 International students in Japan, investigating whether this notion of “Using Sports to Nurture Guts” is shared among them. Also, in the following study, we asked 23 non-Asian participants the same question via SNS and their answers will be shown qualitatively. Finally, we will suggest a new role of sports in this globalized world.
Oriental notion of sports, Japanese sport comics, non-Asians views of sport mentality
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