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26 Communication and sport in Japan

  • Lee Thompson
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Communication and Sport
This chapter is in the book Communication and Sport

Abstract

Communication and media studies of sport in Japan are not well-known in the English-speaking world. Nonetheless, paralleling the more well-known situation in Europe and the Americas, communication and sport have been intricately linked in Japan. Sport and sport-like activities are represented in the earliest written and archaeological records. Managing communication played an important role in the development and transmission of the various martial arts. Spectator sports such as sumo were advertised through the medium of woodblock printing. The mass media, introduced in the 19th century, played an integral role in the development of modern sports in Japan. Newspapers established and sponsored competitions that have become important dates on the national calendar, and, along with railway companies, established the first professional baseball teams, making baseball the most popular sport throughout the 20th century. The ostensibly traditional sport of sumo has been strongly shaped through its encounter with newspapers, radio, and television. The digital media have followed in this trend of becoming owners of professional teams themselves and infusing money into sport through acquisition of broadcast rights. The example of Japan is an important contribution to the study of sport and communication in general.

Abstract

Communication and media studies of sport in Japan are not well-known in the English-speaking world. Nonetheless, paralleling the more well-known situation in Europe and the Americas, communication and sport have been intricately linked in Japan. Sport and sport-like activities are represented in the earliest written and archaeological records. Managing communication played an important role in the development and transmission of the various martial arts. Spectator sports such as sumo were advertised through the medium of woodblock printing. The mass media, introduced in the 19th century, played an integral role in the development of modern sports in Japan. Newspapers established and sponsored competitions that have become important dates on the national calendar, and, along with railway companies, established the first professional baseball teams, making baseball the most popular sport throughout the 20th century. The ostensibly traditional sport of sumo has been strongly shaped through its encounter with newspapers, radio, and television. The digital media have followed in this trend of becoming owners of professional teams themselves and infusing money into sport through acquisition of broadcast rights. The example of Japan is an important contribution to the study of sport and communication in general.

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Preface to Handbooks of Communication Science series V
  3. Acknowledgments IX
  4. Contents XI
  5. I Introduction to communication and sport
  6. 1 Communication and sport: an emergent field 1
  7. 2 Playing on the communication and sport field: dispositions, challenges, and priorities 23
  8. II Communication studies of sport
  9. 3 Through the kaleidoscope: all the colors of sports fanship 45
  10. 4 Moving beyond the local: media, marketing, and “satellite” sports fans 65
  11. 5 The organizational processes of athletic coaching 83
  12. 6 Are children getting outplayed? Examining the intersection of children’s involvement in physical activity, youth sports, and barriers to participation 103
  13. 7 From the living room to the ball field: a communicative approach to studying the family through sport 121
  14. 8 The sports interpreter’s role and interpreting strategies: a case study of Japanese professional baseball interpreters 137
  15. 9 The ethos of the activist athlete 161
  16. 10 Forgivable blackness: Jack Johnson and the politics of presidential clemency 179
  17. 11 Haram hoops? FIBA, Nike, and the hijab’s half-court defense 199
  18. 12 “Ideology in practice”: conceptualizing the NCAA’s <student-athlete> as an ideograph 217
  19. 13 Connecting local and global aspirations and audiences: communication in, around, and about Football Club Barcelona 235
  20. III Sport and media
  21. 14 MediaSport: over production and global consumption 255
  22. 15 Uber-sport 275
  23. 16 Sport, media and the promotion of militarism: theoretical inter-continental reflections of the United Kingdom and South Korea 293
  24. 17 Football, gender, and sexism: the ugly side of the world’s beautiful game 313
  25. 18 Communication, sport, disability, and the (able)national 333
  26. 19 NBC’s diversity Olympics: promoting gay athletes in PyeongChang 351
  27. 20 Greening media sport: sport and the communication of environmental issues 369
  28. 21 Legitimizing and institutionalizing eSports in the NBA 2K League 387
  29. IV Communicating nationalism(s) in sport
  30. 22 The biggest double-edged sword in sport media: Olympic media and the rendering of identity 405
  31. 23 “For the good of the world”: the innovations and influences of the UK’s early international televizing of sport 421
  32. 24 Sports and the media in Germany: lessons in nationhood and multiculturalism 441
  33. 25 Sport celebrity and multiculturalism in South Korea during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games 459
  34. 26 Communication and sport in Japan 477
  35. 27 Communicating Igbo sports nationalism under military dictatorship and democracy 495
  36. 28 Sport communication and the politics of identity in the MENA region 515
  37. 29 “Even when the angel of death will come I will still wear yellow-blue”: Israeli soccer fans’ chants as a window for understanding cultural and sports reality 527
  38. 30 Colombian football: a national popular of pleasure, violence, and labor 543
  39. 31 Football, television, and the state in Argentina: a tale of monopolies, patrimonies, and populisms 561
  40. V Communicating in applied sport contexts
  41. 32 Crisis communication and sport: the organization, the players, and the fans 579
  42. 33 Communicating fantasy sport 597
  43. 34 The contemporary use of social media in professional sport 615
  44. 35 Social media and sport marketing 633
  45. 36 Sport media, sport journalism, and the digital era 651
  46. 37 The male and female sports journalists divide on the Twittersphere 669
  47. 38 #Rio2016 and #WorldCup2018: social media meets journalism 693
  48. 39 Ghosted gods: commodifying celebrities, decrying wraiths, and contesting graven images 709
  49. Contributors to this volume 729
  50. Index 737
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