This cutting edge collection presents a political reading of the power of modern sport in Asia. Providing an interdisciplinary study of political and cultural tensions in Asia, past and present, through the key case-study of sport, it illuminates the complex practices and legacies of Japanese imperialism across East and Southeast Asia through the 20th century and beyond. Focusing on the deep background to contemporary dynamics of intraregional tensions, it examines sport both as a tool of imperialism and as an agent of reconciliation as the region gears up to the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. Offering a unique contribution to East Asian Studies, Colonial and Postcolonial Studies and Sport Studies, this work represent key reading for students and scholars of East Asian studies, International Politics and Sports Diplomacy.
This is the first book to offer a comprehensive overview of the history, development and contemporary significance of sport in Asia. It addresses a wide range of issues central to sport in the context of Asian culture, politics, economy and society. The book explores diverse topics, including the history of traditional Asian sport; the rise of modern sport in Asia; the Olympic Movement in Asia; mega sport events in Asia; sport governance and policy; gender, class and ethnicity in Asian sport, and Asia’s sporting heroes and heroines. With contributions from 74 leading international scholars, it offers a new perspective on understanding Asian sport and society, telling the story of how sport in this mega-region is coming together and reshaping the world in the process. It also provides readers with a wide lens through which to better contextualise the relationships between Asia and the world within the global sport community. The Routledge Handbook of Sport in Asia is a vital resource for students and scholars studying the history, politics, sociology, culture and policy of sport in Asia, as well as sport management, sport history, sport sociology, and sport policy and politics. It is also valuable reading for those working in international sport organisations.
This tribute to Professor J. A. (Tony) Mangan is well-deserved. Professor Mangan is a path-breaking scholar. Mangan's impact is measurable in the rarest of ways: institution-building. Under his leadership, a globally situated team has opened a new relationship between sport and the academy and I recommend Manufacturing Masculinity: The Mangan Oeuvre -- Global Reflections on J.A. Mangan's Studies of Masculinity, Imperialism and Militarism as, yet again, it offers a unique consideration of the relationship between sport and academy. Professor John D. Kelly - University of Chicago Professor Mangan has since the early 1980s been one of the foremost international scholars within his chosen field of cultural history. Over this period he has possibly more convincingly than any other international academic shown in his research how much sport and associated forms of competitive performance have not only reflected and reproduced but indeed sometimes also reformed and redirected fundamental political, cultural and social structures and ideological transformative forces in modern civilisation. Professor Henrik Meinander - University of Helsinki Professor Mangan is widely and greatly respected in China as a scholar of international distinction... he has made both direct and indirect contributions to Chinese scholarship especially regarding Chinese women and their long struggle for emancipation... Finally, and I cannot stress this point too strongly, a most important contribution ... has been his crystal clear and nuanced writing style much appreciated by... Chinese who wish to write for the international scholastic world. Professor Dong Jinxia - Peking University No one has had a more influential role in, or made a greater contribution to the cultural history of modern sport than Professor J.A. Mangan. With his visionary, pioneering monographs and many seminal edited collections and as founding editor of the series Sport in the Global Society with its numerous volumes and most especially as founding editor and editor of The International Journal of the History of Sport for some thirty years -- which he took from the original three numbers a year to eighteen numbers a year, his contribution has been unparalleled. Professor Roberta J. Park - University of California, Berkeley
"East Asia is increasingly prominent within global sport. In the short period between 2018 and 2022 it will have held two Winter and one Summer Olympics, and the Rugby World Cup for good measure. This is not a sudden development. It has been in train for some time, although many scholars, especially in Europe and North America, have been focussed primarily on sport in their own countries and regions. J.A. Mangan, who for decades has been looking closely at sport in East Asia while encouraging others to do likewise, has made a major contribution to knowledge and understanding of a once under-appreciated subject. This excellent collection in his honour analyses the key interwoven elements of sport, media and nation in China, Japan and South Korea. It demonstrates how the structure and practice of sport connects in myriad ways with its representation, not least with regard to national narratives, international rivalries and transnational trends. It is a book that does signal justice both to East Asian Studies and to the academic who recognised the importance of sport to that field, and who has done so much to ensure that the region is centrally placed within any contemporary analysis of the world of sport." David Rowe, Emeritus Professor of Cultural Research, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University "Professor Mangan is the master dissector of the connections between sport and politics, geopolitics and nationalism across multiple Asian contexts. A collection of essays in honour of his long service to academic understandings of these fields is well deserved, and the editors and contributors to this volume have served up a worthy tribute. Showcasing new work by a stellar cast of China, Japan and Korea experts, in combination the papers collected here yield valuable insights into the issues of nation building, identity, media representation and sport which have been the subject of Professor Mangan's pioneering work over the past several decades. No one has done more to put East Asia on the map in terms of academic research on the manifold socio-political dimensions of sport, and this superbly constructed volume orchestrated by rising Tianwei Ren confirms that we neglect this fascinating, complex region at our peril." Jonathan Sullivan, Director of China Policy Institute and China Soccer Observatory, Associate Professor, School of Politics and IR. University of Nottingham
The global geopolitics of sport is being transformed in and by East Asia. Sport in recent decades has been avidly embraced by East Asian nations, with implications both for their image on the international stage and their domestic national identities. The three post-war East Asian Olympic Games, the ‘glittering’ Guangzhou Asian Games in 2010 and the march of Asia into the global sport market illustrate the fact that a new global sports order has emerged. This collection uniquely discerns the ‘tectonic’ shift of global power in the geopolitical, economic, cultural and social dynamics of sport from West to East. It also reveals ‘that the global empire of commerce’ is similarly shifting eastwards. The chapters, written by leading authorities on East Asia, widens the focus, advances the knowledge and sharpens the appreciation of both global sport and regional current transformation in the making and, in doing so, contributes to an understanding of profound changes in global sport. This book was originally published as a special issue of The International Journal of the History of Sport.
This volume examines sport’s relationship with the environment in the context of the ongoing climate crisis. Contributors examine how sport is implicated in environmentally damaging activities,how decisions are made about how to respond to environmental issues, who benefits most and least from these decisions.
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.
A study of the complex role of the seaside as a leisure space in colonial Hong Kong. British sports were in many respects more meaningful in the empire than literature, music, art, or religion. They served as an instrument of cultural association and later of cultural change, promoting imperial union and then postimperial goodwill. Poon analyses the ways in which British colonists and Chinese leaders, backed by the rhetoric of public health and nationalism, respectively, transformed the Hong Kong seaside into a leisure space. She argues that the growing popularity of seaside resorts and sea bathing as a preferred form of leisure activity across the social and ethnic spectrums served an important role in shaping the racial relationship between Westerners and the Chinese population, as well as the Chinese people’s perception of the female body and the seaside, during the colonial period. The popularity of British leisure forms in colonial Hong Kong does not necessarily mean the triumph of “Britishness.” This book will be of great interest to historians with an interest in leisure and in Empire and Colonialism, as well as historians of Colonial Hong Kong and Modern China.
When the Empire of Japan defeated the Chinese Qing Dynasty in 1895 and won its first colony, Taiwan, it worked to establish it as a model colony. The Japanese brought Taiwan not only education and economic reform but also a new pastime made popular in Japan by American influence: baseball. But unlike in many other models, the introduction of baseball to Taiwan didn't lead to imperial indoctrination or nationalist resistance. Taiwan instead stands as a fascinating counterexample to an otherwise seemingly established norm in the cultural politics of modern imperialism. Taiwan's baseball culture evolved as a cultural hybrid between American, Japanese, and later Chinese influences. In Empire of Infields John J. Harney traces the evolution and identity of Taiwanese baseball, focusing on three teams: the Nenggao team of 1924-25, the Kan? team of 1931, and the Hongye schoolboy team of 1968. Baseball developed as an aspect of Japanese cultural practices that survived the end of Japanese rule at the end of World War II and was a central element of Japanese influence in the formation of popular culture across East Asia. The Republic of China (which reclaimed Taiwan in 1945) only embraced baseball in 1968 as an expression of a distinct Chinese nationalism and as a vehicle for political narratives. Empire of Infields explores not only the development of Taiwanese baseball but also the influence of baseball on Taiwan's cultural identity in its colonial years and beyond as a clear departure from narratives of assimilation and resistance.
This book considers how Samoans embraced and reshaped the English game of cricket, recasting it as a distinctively Samoan pastime, kirikiti. Starting with cricket’s introduction to the islands in 1879, it uses both cricket and kirikiti to trace six decades of contest between and within the categories of ‘colonisers’ and ‘colonised.’ How and why did Samoans adapt and appropriate the imperial game? How did officials, missionaries, colonists, soldiers and those with mixed foreign and Samoan heritage understand and respond to the real and symbolic challenges kirikiti presented? And how did Samoans use both games to navigate foreign colonialism(s)? By investigating these questions, Benjamin Sacks suggests alternative frameworks for conceptualising sporting transfer and adoption, and advances understandings of how power, politics and identity were manifested through sport, in Samoa and across the globe.
