Marathon Japan: Distance Racing and Civic Culture by Thomas R. H. Havens (review)

Marathon Japan: Distance Racing and Civic Culture by Thomas
   R. H. Havens (review)

   Stefan Hübner

   Monumenta Nipponica, Volume 71, Number 2, 2016, pp. 487-491 (Review)

   Published by Sophia University
   DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/mni.2016.0063

        For additional information about this article
        https://muse.jhu.edu/article/651030

[ Access provided at 20 Apr 2020 03:26 GMT with no institutional affiliation ]

book reviews                                               487
allegories, then it is not because they were intended as such, but because their me-
dium invites us to regard them in that way—to cite Owens again, no matter what the
subject is, photographs have “allegorical potential” because “what they offer is only a
fragment, and thus affirms its own arbitrariness and contingency.”3 The photographic
representations of Japanese cultural roots discussed in Reynolds’s study are also con-
ditioned by a contingent relationship with their referents, a relationship that can, it is
important to note, coexist with the “evidential force” of photography.
  Although Allegories of Time and Space tends to tell already-familiar stories about
some already oft-discussed works of postwar Japan, its analyses of specific works are
convincing. In particular, Reynolds’s careful reading of sequences of photographs and
their captions sets a good example for the critical study of photobooks, a format that
is attracting increasing attention in the field of photographic history. Furthermore,
through its recourse to the concept of allegory, the study successfully challenges pre-
vailing essentialist views on Japanese arts, reminding us that tradition and cultural
identity are not innate and eternal, but constructed and historical.

  1
    Angus Fletcher, Allegory: The Theory of a Symbolic Mode (Cornell University Press, 1964), p. 2.
  2
    Craig Owens, “The Allegorical Impulse: Toward a Theory of Postmodernism,” October 12
(Spring 1980), p. 81.
  3
    Owens 1980, p. 71.

Marathon Japan: Distance Racing and Civic Culture. By Thomas R. H. Havens.
 University of Hawai‘i Press, 2015. 240 pages. Hardcover $47.00.

                                                                     Stefan Hübner
                                                      National University of Singapore

People interested in Japan’s participation in the Olympic Games or in Japanese co-
lonialism in Korea are very likely aware that the marathon at the Berlin Olympics in
1936 was won by Sohn Kee-chung (known in Japan as Son Kitei), who, as a colonized
Korean, was a member of the Japanese team. Less understood might be how popular
marathons and ekiden (long-distance relay races) have become in Japan. Thomas R. H.
Havens addresses these two types of races in his newest book. Covering Japanese par-
ticipation in such events from the early twentieth century to the present, he provides
readers with rich information on elite athletes and on major races hosted not only
in Japan, but globally. Quite often, this includes very detailed overviews on who won
which race and in how much time. This focus on quantitative facts becomes slightly
tiresome in some cases, and the book could have benefited from a somewhat more
analytical approach. Havens explains at the outset that his main focus is not on anthro-
pology and body culture, but the topics he does focus on—among them commercial-
ization, sports for the masses, and celebrities—could have been better supported by

488                    Monumenta Nipponica 71:2 (2016)
some deeper reflections on theoretical approaches to nationalism; nation-branding;
democratization; citizenship training; and the relationship between media, sponsor-
ship, and the commercialization of sport.
   The book is chronologically structured. Following the introductory first chapter,
chapter 2 takes up the first half of the twentieth century. Marathon running was one
way for Japan to catch up with the Western powers, since it allowed Japanese athletes
to demonstrate “both their athletic prowess and their country’s new national power”
(p. 34). The Japanese government, along with newspapers eager to sell copies to a
growing number of readers consuming sports news, thus developed a strong interest
in these contests. However, initial Japanese successes in the Olympic Games were very
limited. Havens mentions in the introduction the example of the Stockholm Games
(1912), the first Olympics in which a Japanese team participated. The team consisted of
two athletes, both runners, under the guidance of Kanō Jigorō—the inventor of judo
and president of Tōkyō Kōtō Shihan Gakkō (Tokyo Higher Normal School). The run-
ner chosen for the marathon did not manage to finish, in part because of problems
he experienced as a result of the long sea trip to Europe. A more influential event dis-
cussed in this chapter was the Meiji Jingū Taiiku Taikai (Meiji Shrine Sports Festival),
first held in 1924. Havens explains that this festival encouraged nationalism and impe-
rial rule rather than the liberalism and internationalism that otherwise characterized
the Taishō period. Simultaneously, it stimulated interest in sports—including distance
races—among those outside the upper echelons and was thus a sign of growing social
integration. Havens’s discussion sheds light on the intentions of the Japanese govern-
ment; media companies; and certain Japanese sports associations, such as the Nihon
Taiiku Kyōkai (Japan Amateur Sports Association), which was founded by Kanō. One
wonders, however, if there were also significant foreign, and especially American, in-
fluences on marathon training practices and on related sports medical knowledge in
Japan and its colonial empire. A seemingly noteworthy example that comes to mind
is the role of the Seoul YMCA in training gold medalist Sohn for the 1936 Olympic
marathon, which is emphasized in the autobiography of Laurence L. Doggett, presi-
dent of the International YMCA College (predecessor of today’s Springfield College, a
Massachusetts-based institution iconic in the world of physical education).1
   The third chapter covers the first decades of the postwar period. After Japan’s disas-
trous defeat and loss of power and status, conservative politicians appreciated Japa-
nese victories at various sporting events as a means to regain international prestige.
Such opportunities included the Boston Marathon and the Asian Games in New Del-
hi, both of which took place in 1951. However, even contests in which the winner was
a non-Japanese, as happened at the Mainichi Marathon held in Osaka in 1961, could
boost Japan’s international profile: the participation of reigning Olympic champion
Abebe Bikila (an Ethiopian), had, after all, attracted international attention, all the
more so after he came in first. Some years later, Tsuburaya Kōkichi’s bronze medal in
the marathon of the 1964 Tokyo olympics, the first medal won for Japan in this event
since 1936, unsurprisingly caused a media frenzy. Tsuburaya committed suicide in

book reviews                                         489
1967 after physical debilitation prevented him from continuing his career as a long-
distance runner. Havens discusses this and other instances of health problems among
world-class athletes—a phenomenon often attributable to excessive training.
  Chapter 4 shows how professional running has gained in popularity since the 1970s
and 1980s. Against the backdrop of economic boom and the growing popularity of
sports broadcasts on television, the idea of unpaid amateurs competing against each
other in elite competition vanished. In 1990, the Ministry of Education formally rec-
ognized professional athletes and began to provide financial support to professional
sports. As a consequence of these processes, professional sports turned into a con-
sumer good for fans and an important business for media companies. According to
Havens, “media executives believe that their sales of sports newspapers and mag-
azines rise when televised sports viewership is strong, citing an increase in sports
newspaper circulation from 3 million in 1965 to 6.3 million in 1999, far outpacing
the growth of general newspapers” (p. 75). At the same time, sales of TV broadcast-
ing rights provided sports officials the necessary money to organize big events of
interest to professional athletes and to fans, but also made the officials dependent on
broadcasters’ scheduling preferences. One example concerning television’s impact on
long-distance racing was NTV’s decision in 1987 to broadcast the complete Hakone
Ekiden live, thus transforming the event from “a venerable elite university competi-
tion among gentlemanly amateurs into a consumer commodity virtually unsurpassed
in Japanese sportscasting history” (p. 76). Quite obviously, television broadcasting
also influenced sponsors, who could attract more public attention through visual me-
dia. Commercialization was not limited to men’s long-distance races, but also had an
impact on the founding of ekiden for female teams, such as the National Corporate
Women’s Ekiden in 1981, and of women’s marathons, such as the Tokyo International
Women’s Marathon, launched in 1979.
  The fifth and sixth chapters cover the 1990s and 2000s, respectively. Havens sees
the 1990s as having been a watershed decade for Japanese female marathon runners,
as exemplified by Arimori Yūko, winner of the silver medal at the Barcelona Olympic
marathon in 1992. She was criticized by the public for declaring that she did not race for
her country, but for herself. Many sportswriters and fellow athletes interpreted this and
similar comments by Arimori as arrogance and as signs of the growing focus on the self
that marked the 1990s. Shortly thereafter, she left the corporate team of which she was a
member, thus becoming a full professional who was completely dependent on income
from sponsors and other sources of funding, such as appearance fees. Although mem-
bers of corporate teams were de facto full-time athletes, their status as employees with
the possibility of remaining with their companies after the end of their athletic careers
meant that they were classified as amateur runners. The two chapters include a variety
of further case studies of female and male elite marathon and ekiden runners.
  The seventh and final chapter takes a slightly different approach and provides a
social history of contemporary sports for the masses. It focuses on the boom in
participatory marathons since the early 1980s and the growing number of so-called

490                    Monumenta Nipponica 71:2 (2016)
shimin (citizen) runners. The term shimin in this context initially had a negative con-
notation, since sports officials used it to describe non-elite athletes, but it took on a
more positive tone in the 1980s, reflecting “the new lifestyle values the general public
increasingly ascribed to running” (p. 143). Havens shows that open-entry marathons
organized all over Japan often attract thousands of ordinary runners. Readers also
learn that since 1989 nearly two-thirds of the participants in the Honolulu Marathon
have come from Japan. This number, noteworthy in itself, becomes all the more re-
markable when one reads that 22,054 runners finished in 2013. Here I thought that
further analysis of the Japanese-Hawaiian tourism industry could have revealed even
deeper insights into the commercialization of nonprofessional sports and transna-
tional connections. The main event addressed in this chapter, however, is the Tokyo
Marathon, established in 2007 by the metropolitan government. Havens relates that
Governor Ishihara Shintarō and his ultraconservative allies planned to host an event
reminiscent of marathons held in Boston, New York, and London, one that would
“mobilize personal political support, promote tourism in Tokyo by racing past famous
landmarks,” and help bring the Olympic Games to Tokyo (p. 150). Ishihara managed to
persuade skeptical police—correctly, as it turned out—that the event would not wreak
havoc with road traffic. In the end, the first Tokyo Marathon cost about 1.5 billion yen
(12.7 million U.S. dollars at 2007 exchange rates), attracted an estimated 1.78 million
spectators, and saw the participation of about 30,000 men and women of various ages,
including some with disabilities. About 95,000 runners had applied for admission—a
number that soared in subsequent years. Sponsorship was an important issue for the
Tokyo Marathon and contributed to its commercialization, while the mobilization of
masses of volunteers further served to reduce public spending on the race. Other top-
ics briefly addressed by Havens in this chapter are the arts events accompanying the
Tokyo Marathon, security questions, and links to charity (for example, 707 runners in
2011 each payed 100,000 yen into one of several charitable funds to bypass the applica-
tion lottery). The chapter also relates that in the years following the establishment of
the Tokyo Marathon, similar open-entry marathons were founded and some already-
existing elite races were opened to large numbers of shimin runners.
  Readers strongly interested in Japanese marathons and in ekiden will find many
remarkable details in Havens’s book, including information concerning male and fe-
male runners of various social backgrounds and age groups, as well as those with
disabilities. Moreover, the book is not limited to competitions taking place within Ja-
pan, but also addresses Japanese participation in a variety of events abroad. I respect
Havens’s decision not to focus on anthropology and body culture in this study, but
nevertheless think that many of the book’s fact-laden discussions of particular races
and elite athletes’ careers could have been usefully cut in favor of a stronger analysis
or, instead, been presented simply as illustrative tables. The result might have been
a more thought-provoking examination of Japanese civic culture and the commer-
cialization of Japanese sports, including some comparisons to global issues such as
the rise of professionalism, which is briefly hinted at in connection to the Olympic

book reviews                                              491
Games. This could have been further supported by an analysis of related topics, such
as public health, changing sports norms and values, tourism, and corruption—all
topics that are briefly touched upon but then dropped. With the current book as a
foundation, perhaps Havens or others will take up such topics in future studies.

   1
     See Laurence L. Doggett, Man and a School: Pioneering in Higher Education at Springfield Col-
lege (New York: Association Press, 1943), chapter 12.

Contemporary Sino-Japanese Relations on Screen: A History, 1989–2005. By
 Griseldis Kirsch. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015. 240 pages. Hardcover
 £85.00/$114.00; softcover £28.99/$39.95.

                                                                   Robert Hoppens
                                               University of Texas Rio Grande Valley

Contemporary Sino-Japanese Relations on Screen provides an illuminating perspec-
tive on Japan-China relations in the early post-Cold War period, a time of profound
change in this relationship in terms of both politics and the economy. Author Grisel-
dis Kirsch uses a selection of Japanese films and television dramas to examine “how
the discourses around China’s rise evolved in Japan.” Her aim in this study is to reveal
“how Japan saw its emerging rival during this crucial time” when, following the col-
lapse of the Japanese asset price bubble, China came to challenge Japan as the leading
economic power in Asia (p. 9).
   Kirsch’s analysis is based on a selection of (by my count) nineteen films and eight
television dramas produced between 1989 and 2005, as well as several earlier films
and other popular culture productions taken up for comparative purposes. The se-
lected materials span a variety of genres, from romantic comedies to yakuza crime
dramas, and include both major studio productions and independent art-house
films. The book’s analysis reveals differences between films and television dramas
and also across genres, while emphasizing recurrent patterns in the representation of
China in Japanese popular media. Kirsch includes films set in or featuring characters
from Taiwan and Hong Kong as well as the People’s Republic of China, allowing for
comparisons of the ways in which political and economic relations with different
parts of Greater China were reflected on the Japanese screen.
   Following a brief overview of the history of the Sino-Japanese relationship, Kirsch
reviews major theories of Otherness drawn from sociology, postcolonial theory, and
cultural and media studies to clearly and usefully define the ideas and terms that
inform her analysis. In characterizing the representation of China in Japanese media,
Kirsch makes particular use of insights drawn from postcolonial theory. She thus builds
on the work of Koichi Iwabuchi, who studied Japanese reactions to the reception of
Japanese popular culture in Asia and found that they were, “by and large, postcolonial,