University of Hawai'i Press
Religion and Sport in Japan
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Edited by:
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About this book
The sports world’s attention was focused on Japan for the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics and Paralympics. The years-long buildup to and aftermath of the games occurred in the midst of the global pandemic, which delayed the event until 2021. Given all of this, there is perhaps no better time to delve into an often overlooked but critical facet of sport in Japan: religion.
Religion has long been a part of the Japanese sport tradition—from Shugendō practitioners offering sumo bouts to the gods to soccer players of all ages praying for success at Shintō shrines; from the use of meditation and ritual in martial arts to gain focus or superhuman abilities to religious organizations sponsoring sporting events and teams and school sports clubs. Religion and Sport in Japan brings together historians and sport and religious studies specialists from Japan, the US, and Europe to address sport’s ties to corporate and national identity, politics, environmentalism, ritual, and sacred space. Major themes discussed include the spiritual geographies of sport, sport as invented tradition, technologies of self, material culture, and civil religion.
The chapters are written so that sport historians with no background in the study of Japan or religious studies scholars who have never before examined the world of sport will find the material accessible. To provide further grounding for non-field specialists, the volume begins with two background chapters that introduce sport studies in Japan and the study of religion and sport.
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Topics
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Frontmatter
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Contents
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1. Introduction
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2. Sport and Sport Studies in Japan
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3. Religion and Sport: Comparisons and Intersections
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4. Grappling with “Civil Religion”: Raiden Tame’emon and Sumo Wrestling in Late Early Modern Japan
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5. War Games: The Meiji Shrine Games (1924–1943) as Civil Religion
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6. For the Planet and the People: Shinto, the Environment, and the Tokyo 2020 Olympics
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7. Judo as Authentic Fake: Debates over the Sacred and Profane
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8. Religion and Identity in Karate
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9. The Aikido of Ueshiba Morihei as Ritual Practice to Reconstruct the World
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10. Praying for Team and Corporation: Integrating Sport, Religion, History, and Prestige at a Prayer Temple for the Seibu Lions Baseball Team
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11. Fighting Spirit Omamori as Religious Technologies: Amulets, the Self, and the Nation at a Sports Shrine
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Contributors
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Index
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