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The sportification of judo: global convergence and evolution*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2013

Shohei Sato
Shohei Sato*
Affiliation:
Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan E-mail: shohei.sato@googlemail.com
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Abstract

This article re-examines our understanding of modern sport. Today, various physical cultures across the world are practised under the name of sport. Almost all of these sports originated in the West and expanded to the rest of the world. However, the history of judo confounds the diffusionist model. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, a Japanese educationalist amalgamated different martial arts and established judo not as a sport but as ‘a way of life’. Today it is practised globally as an Olympic sport. Focusing on the changes in its rules during this period, this article demonstrates that the globalization of judo was accompanied by a constant evolution of its character. The overall ‘sportification’ of judo took place not as a diffusion but as a convergence – a point that is pertinent to the understanding of the global sportification of physical cultures, and also the standardization of cultures in modern times.

Keywords

cultural exchangeJapanmartial artsnon-westernsport
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , July 2013 , pp. 299 - 317
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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Footnotes

*

This article would not have seen the light of day without the help and insights of Tetsuya Nakajima, Takumi Miyazaki, Joydeep Sen, Masayuki Ishii, Matthew Taylor, Neil Carter, Dai Nishimori, Naoki Murata, Hanako Motohashi, Kana Hoshi, Prashant Kidambi, James Disley, and the editors and anonymous referees of this journal. I am also thankful for the support and understanding of my former colleagues at the Organization for Islamic Area Studies, Waseda University, Tokyo.

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