Culture, Nationalism and 'Saving Face': Sport and Discrimination in Modern Japan

Since 1946, the Japan Amateur Sports Association (JASA) has been hosting national sports festivals in Japan in order to develop top class Japanese athletes and promote sports among the Japanese people. Today, the festivals, known as the ‘Kokutai’, are held three times a year, summer, autumn and winter. The location of the festival changes every year so that each of Japan’s 47 prefectures and districts has a chance to host the event. The Kokutai is the biggest annual sports event in Japan. More than 30,000 athletes compete and 4 billion yen in tax money is spent each year for the Kokutai. Japan’s government, the host prefecture and the sports organizations share the cost burden. The Kokutai are governed by JASA under the Ministry of Education, Sports, Science and Culture (the Monbushou). Even though there are now more than 1.5 million foreigners living long-term or permanently in Japan, foreigners are not allowed to participate in the Kokutai. (There have been a few exceptions.) The exclusion of these foreigners constitutes racial discrimination as defined by the United Nations Committee on Human Rights (UNCHR). Racial discrimination in sports in Japan is not limited to the Kokutai Sports Festivals. Japan’s sports organizations, leagues, tournaments and teams use the Kokutai as an example for limiting or prohibiting the participation of foreigners in sports on a large scale, from high-school teams to old-timers tournaments. The opinion of these sports organizations is that if JASA can discriminate against foreigners, then it must be okay. (On the other hand if discrimination of foreigners is bad, then why can JASA do it?) The exclusion of these foreigners makes the Kokutai and Japan sports in general part of one of the largest Fascist movements in the world today. For comparison, the number of foreigners living in Japan is twice the number of Jews that lived in Germany prior to the Second World War.