Research Program
Todd Joseph Miles Holden
Chair, Department of Multi-Cultural Societies
Professor, Mediated Sociology
Graduate School of International Cultural
Studies
Tohoku University
Research Program:
An Intellectual History
and
Recent Review
Todd Joseph Miles Holden
Overview
 Brief Intellectual History
 Institutional road traveled to this
point
 Research traditions/contributions
 Organizational involvements
 Recent Publications
 Current Projects
 In-depth View of One Project
I. Brief Intellectual History
From whence I came
• how I got from there to here
Institutional Road
 Syracuse University, Maxwell School of Public Affairs
and Citizenship
 Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Social Science (1988)
 Tohoku University
 College of General Education, Assistant Professor
(1989 - 1993) -- English, American Studies
 Graduate School of Information Science, Adjunct
Assistant Professor (1993 - 2001) -- Social Structure
and Change
 Faculty of Language and Culture, Associate Professor
(1993 - 2001) -- Communication Studies
 Graduate School of International Cultural Sciences,
Professor (2001 to present) -- Mediated Sociology
Inferentially
 Institutionally: rooted; loyal.
 Intellectually: committed to melding
disciplines
 Sociology, anthropology, media and
communication studies, cultural studies,
Japanese Studies and (earlier) American
Studies represented
 Also a commitment to balancing theory
and empiricism
 With grounded theorization prominently
featured
Organizational Involvements
 Executive on the boards of the following
professional associations:
 Asia Pacific Sociology Association (2002 to
present)
 Vice President; in charge of Publications
 Anthropology of Japan in Japan (2001 to
2005)
 Director of Communications
 International Association for Media and
Communication Research (2005 to present)
 Co-Chair, Gender Section
Organizational Involvements
Member of these Editorial Boards:




Communication Theory
Communication, Culture & Critique
Journal of Multicultural Discourses
Asia Pacific Sociology
 Managing Editor
Organizational Involvements
Referee for:
 International Communication
Association, Popular Communication
Section
 Cambridge University Press
 Trans Pacific Press
 Asian Journal of Social Science
 Japanese Studies
 M/C: a Journal of Media and Culture
Organizational Involvements
Webmaster for:
 Asia Pacific Sociological Association
(APSA)
 Gender Section, International
Association for Media and
Communication Research (IAMCR)
 Anthropology of Japan in Japan (AJJ),
2002-2006
Organizational Involvements
And . . .
 There was that stint for 5 years as
Head Coach of the Men’s basketball
team at Tohoku University (1989 1994) and
 Two years as Head Coach of a
women’s pro team (1994 - 1996) in
Yamagata (Yamagata Ginko Lyers).
II. Publications
In the past few years, I have published
books, chapters and articles on the
following communication-related topics:
Recent Publications
 The “Naturalizing” of Gender in Japanese TV
Commercials (Hampton, 2007)
 Media, Cultural Values and Cycles of Heroic
Construction in Japan (Hampton, 2007)
 Media in Asia (Routledge 2006)
 Intimacy and Japanese TV (Routledge 2006)
 Adolescent cell phone use in Japan
(Routledge 2006)
 “Sportsports” and globalization (Routledge
2006)
Past Publications
Extending a bit farther back:
 Masculinities in Japanese TV Food Shows
(Food and Foodways 2005)
 "Japanese Television," in The Encyclopedia of
Television (Routledge 2005)
 "Advertising: a synthetic approach" in
Handbook of Media Studies. (Sage 2004)
 "Japan’s Mediated ’Global’ Identities" (Trans
Pacific Press 2003
 Globalization and Inequality in Asia (Trans
Pacific Press 2003)
 Internet dating and sociation in Japan
(Routledge 2003)
III. Current Projects
Four projects I am involved in now:
1. ReDotPop: Mediations of Japanese
popular culture (Soft Skull Press)

Inspired by my column in PopMatters
2. Gender Ads, Japan (Hampton Press)
3. The New Floating World: Navigating
the world of Japanese advertising
4. Sportsports: An uncommon
theorization of globalization
Current Projects
Today I want to talk in more detail
about the Sportsports research,
because it is:
 original
Current Projects
This Sportsports research is:
 representative of my perspective,
which:
 Balances theory and empiricism
 Melds popular culture with
sociology and anthropology
Current Projects
The Sportsports research:
 Emphasizes media and communication
 In multiple incarnations / permutations
 And the phenomenological processes that
result
 In this case globalization, the transnational flow of praxis and ideas, and
influences on identity
Relevance
It is this perspective set:
• trans-cultural
• inter-disciplinary
• theoretical and empirical
That I would bring to the design and
management of a nascent
Communication Program in an American
University open for business in Japan.
A. Introduction
Contextualizing
Sportsports
Quic kTime™ and a
TIFF (LZW) decompress or
are needed to see this pic ture.
To Begin
This is a significant moment in Japanese
history:
A time in which Japan’s place in the
increasingly interconnected web of
nations, products, ideas and practices is
mediated in large part by its popular
culture
And, in particular, sporting culture.
This process is supported – if not driven –
by media which focus on what I call
“sportsports”.
Sportsports: A Definition
The moniker refers to the flow of sporting
goods or services both into and out of
nations
 This includes games, players, practices
and philosophies
Sportsports also refers to the array of
techniques by which domestic media
package and audiences consume
information about athletes and athletics at
home and abroad
• In short, these are information imports, too
Media’s Role
Formal media are the conscious agent
in the Sportsport phenomenon
 TV, newspapers, magazines, books,
advertising
Media’s Role
Communications about sportsports have
become seminal social text in everyday
Japanese life
With concrete,
significant effects
• Above all
related to
national and
gendered
identity
B. Evaluative Components




Theories of Globalization
Japan’s Globalizations
The History of Sportsports in Japan
Media Effects / Social Outcomes
Theorizing Globalization
Globalization in a Nutshell
 I have tendered a macro level analysis of
globalization (Holden 2003, 2006)
 It conceives of globalization as transpiring
in stages or “careers”
 (which are) distinctly expressed via
various theoretically specifiable:
 Entities
 Epochs
 Activities
Global Career
Every country possesses its own unique
global “signature” (or “profile”)
• based on its individualized history of
local/global encounters
• across a range of analytic units and
societal sectors
• Which are specifiable, but not
particularly germane to today’s
discussion
Terms
“units”
• globalization may touch a geographic region
differently than it does a singular nation or any
particular social group
“sectors”
• globalization manifests itself differently
depending on which of the traditional domains of
sociological analysis it is associated with:
 Political
 Economic
 Social
 Cultural
 Moral
Factors Influencing “Career”
Every nation’s career differs depending on an array
of factors present in the context.
 Including:
 ethnic composition
 cultural history
 religious practices
 technological development
 political structure
 economic system
 resource mix
Important Dimensions:
Temporality:
• As between nations, “Global Careers” are not
necessarily coterminous
• One nation may be in the midst of politicallydefined globalization, while another may be
engaged in an economic or cultural
globalization
Important Dimensions:
Directionality of Flow:
• Inflow
• Outflow
Career stages are also marked (and dictated) by
“export” and “import”
The “goods” or services (or engagements)
entering or leaving the context may be:
* Economic * Political * Social
* Cultural * Environmental
In a Nutshell
To decipher the global career of any given unit,
sectors have to be specified and assessed
Further, it is necessary to distinguish between
the "import” and “export" of
 Ideas
 People
 Diplomacy
 Trade
 Military contact
At different historical moments.
Globalization Footprints
Differ based on the various mix of these
factors
 As between 2 comparable units (for
instance, countries)
 Also as between 2 epochs for the same
analytic unit
A Simple Comparison
America
 Political:






A colony, followed by a War of Independence
Political tradition of less than 250 years
Decidedly liberal and democratic
Created by Americans for themselves
Never occupied
 Economic:

Japan
stages of agrarian, industrial and postindustrial





Great diversity of population based on various
waves of immigration, from Africa; Western and
Eastern Europe; East, Southeast and South
Asia
 Religion:


Plentiful natural resources
Ever-expanding population
Self-sufficient, but energy-dependent
Very little influx of different ethnicities over
the years.
Religion:


stages of agrarian, industrial and
postindustrial
Ethnic Composition:

A core cultural component with visible
manifestations in society – influencing law,
education, politics, and daily practices.
 Resource Mix:




For nearly 2000 years never invaded or
occupied
An empire until 60 years ago
Less democratic, with aspects of monarchy
and authoritarianism
Imposed externally (by Americans)
Economic:

 Ethnic Composition:

Political:
An endemic, but largely silent and unheeded
aspect of Japanese culture; generally not
present in daily practices.
Resource Mix:



Few natural resources
Declining population
Not self-sufficient; dependent for most
resources
Footprints by Epoch
Thus, for instance, America and Japan have
both manifested “career stages” in which
they were:
• quiescent (or isolated)
• active (or expansionist)
Footprints by Epoch: Japan
• Some bouts of outward extension between
1200 and 1865
• Yet, generally quiescent (i.e. local) pre-Meiji
 then (globally) active between 1865 and 1945
(primarily militarily, though with economic
aggrandizement)
 After brief quiescence (1945 - 1955), it again
emerged (economically) as an export power
 By the 1980s this became as much cultural as
economic (export)
* Fashion * Cinema * Manga * Cuisine
* Sports
Footprints by Epoch: USA
America has gone through numerous bouts
of local quiescence (isolationism) and
global activity.
 A history many of you are familiar with
 And which is intricate enough that, for
reasons of time (and the fact that I am
not an historian), we ought to skip
 Yet can be separated into military,
diplomatic, economic, and cultural
phases
Japan’s Globalization Careers
Befu on Globalization
Befu has argued that there were 3 distinct
periods to Japan’s globalization:
• pre-Tokugawa;
• mid-19th century through 1945;
• the period following the Pacific War
His focus, however, is basically on diaspora
Period 1: Pre-Tokugawa
From the 15th century to 17th centuries
Japanese patrolled the coasts of China and
Southeast Asia
 as pirates and merchants
 establishing "Japan towns" abroad
 This era came to end by governmental
fiat
Period 2: Mid-19th
Century to WWII
This era was marked by Japanese emigration
by the millions to:
 Hawaii
 North and South America
 East and Southeast Asia
 Oceania
This period of diaspora was brought to a
close with the conclusion of the Pacific War
in 1945
Period 3: Post-War Diaspora
The third period started soon after the end
of the war and continues to the present
According to Befu, it is characterized by 8
distinct categories of diaspora
Alternate Conceptualizations
• As considered earlier, a fuller accounting of
any country’s globalization would consider
inward, as well as outward, flow.
• We can think in terms of cultural, political,
social and economic processes.
• A global signature will include:
•
•
•
•
goods and services
political structures and ideas
social groups
cultural ideas and practices
Japan’s Global Outflow
Japan has experienced moments of export as far
back as the early third century, when diplomats
ventured to China.
 export was (political and cultural)
information
Militarizers ventured to what is now the Korean
peninsula in the late fourth century, seeking to
exert dominion
More diplomacy ensued, with missions to China in
the seventh century and then to Europe in 1613
Japan’s Global Outflow
During the Meiji period (1867-1912) the
government sent numerous scholars and
leaders to foreign countries on fact-finding
missions.
 This period of hyper-consumption of the
West resulted in the appropriation of
everything from postal systems and
irrigation projects to goods and culture,
both high and low
Japan’s Global Outflow
Then the militarists fought with China in 1894
and Russia in 1904
 They moved to occupied China in the 1920s
Thereafter came the formation of the Greater
East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere
• And the occupation of numerous Asian
countries -- from Burma to Malaysia
Japan’s Global Outflow
 The next bout of outward-reach was in the
mass-production export-driven era, running
from the mid 1950s to mid-1980s
 During the 1970s Japanese fashion
designers joined international haute couture
 Beginning in the 1980s cultural exports in
music, film, animation and books began
Japan and Inflow
Historically, inflow has been more extensive than outflow
• Buddhism came in the 6th century
• The gun and then Christianity in the middle of the
16th century
• Business from Holland came in the early 17th century
and Russia in the later stages of the 17th century
• The forced opening of Japan by the United States
transpired in the mid-19th century
• Once again, the enforced reconstruction by the
United States following armed conflict between the
nations
The Sports Stage of Japan’s
Globalization Career
Generally:
 athletic inflow has also been more
extensive than outflow
 until establishment of Japan as a
global economic power, sports
outflow was scant.
The Sports Stage of Japan’s
Global Inflow
Since about the turn of the (twentieth) century, Japan
has served as a visitation ground for foreign athletic
imports:
 In 1908 a team of major league reserves visited
and won all seventeen games they played against
Japanese teams
 A 1931 all-star team featured Lou Gehrig, Lefty
Grove, Mickey Cochrane and Frankie Frisch.
 Another visit featured Babe Ruth who drew 75,000
fans to one game, 65,000 to another; he hit 14
homers in 17 games
 Two Negro League visits were staged in 1927 and
1932. Their collective record was 46 wins against
one loss.
The Sports Stage of Japan’s
Global Inflow
 In the pre-war years at least 4 foreigners
played for Japanese teams:
 a Russian won over 300 games in a nineteen
year career
 a Hawaiian American won 240 games
 a Taiwanese became the first foreigner to
win a batting title in 1942
 Following the war, Hawaiian Wally Yonamine,
a nikei, was recruited to help pave the way for
regular foreign involvement in Japanese
baseball.
 Nearly every year for the past forty years
foreigners have been featured on Japanese
rosters
The Sports Stage of Japan’s
Global Inflow
Over the years, Japan has also served as a site for athletic
competitions, facilitating the entry into Japan of people
and practices from beyond national borders
 Tokyo hosted the Third Asian Games in 1958 and the
Summer Olympics in 1965
 This was the first Olympics held in Asia – rightfully
a point of pride for Japanese
 Also the first “TV Olympics”
 Subsequent (winter) Olympiads were staged in
Sapporo in 1972 and Nagano in 1998.
 The former was the first winter games held
outside of Europe or North America
 Japan was the site of Football’s World Cup in 2002
The Sports Stage of Japan’s
Global Inflow
Japan has also served as host of numerous
international competitions:
 The First Winter Asian Games were convened
in Sapporo in 1986; the Second were also held
in Sapporo, in 1990
 The Fifth Winter Games, staged in Aomori in
2003
 The Ninth World Swimming Championships,
held in Fukuoka in 2001
 The World Wheelchair Basketball
championships, in Kitakyushu in 2002
 The World Cup of Volleyball, in various
Japanese cities in late 2003
 Since 2000, ten Japanese cities have hosted
seventeen international marathons
 FIFA’s Club championship in 2006
The Sports Stage of Japan’s
Global Inflow
Japan has become a venue for other nation’s
professional leagues:
 The National Basketball Association
 Major League Baseball
 The National Football League
 The National Hockey League
 The former two have even held official regular
season games on Japanese soil in the past five
years
The Sports Stage of Japan’s
Global Outflow
 Waseda University’s baseball team traveled to
America’s west coast in 1905
 Compiled a 7-win 19-loss record against schools
like Stanford, USC and Washington
 Participation in the Stockholm Olympics of 1912
 Took part in the First Far Eastern Championship
Games held in Manila, in 1913
 The government first subsidized an international
sports event at the Fifth Far Eastern Games, held in
Shanghai, in 1921
 Japan participated in the Davis Cup in 1921
 Otherwise, episodes of athletic outflow prior to the
Pacific War were limited to individual efforts:
 American professional baseball in 1914-15
 Wimbledon in 1934
Athletic Globalization: now a
steadily accreting stream
 Number of Japanese on MLB rosters:
 1995: 1
 2000: 7
 2002: 15
 2007: 15
 Number of Japanese on European football rosters:
 1995: 0
 2000: 1
 2001: 4
 2002: 7
 2004: 8
 2007: 9
Concluding about Flow:
Import, Export and “Episodes”
 Flow manifests itself as economic, political, social,
cultural, or environmental
 sometimes in combination
 When flow enters from the outside, it can be thought of
as “global import”
 When flow emanates from a country and enters another,
foreign, context, it can be thought of as ”global export”
 When incidents of flow occur they can be called
“episodes”
 When episodes occur in great enough measure to
suggest a trend, the apparent “phenomenon” can be
thought of as constituting a stage in the focal country’s
globalization career
The Import/Export Nexus
Certainly, Japan’s status as an economic power
has been central in facilitating the sport import
phenomenon
 This demonstrates the crucial role of
“resource mix” in a country’s global career.
However, the embrace of exogenous content has
always been a hallmark of Japan’s global
signature
 A habituated response for a society too often
isolated from the rest of the world, only to
learn belatedly that it has fallen behind
Mediating Global Career
Media’s Role
 Media become involved in the import
and export of (political, economic,
social, cultural, moral) information.
 This can have influences in specific
contexts, based on the attitudes and
practices of those exposed to and
consuming these information imports
and/or exports.
Sportsport Re-import
Japan’s current stage of globalization can
be called: “sport export/media reimport”
 domestic athletes are global
economic/cultural exports
 But in the hands of news and
entertainment media, they are re-
imported
 With tangible effects -- above all on
national and gendered identity
Sports Re-Import:
Examples
On June 8th 2005, Hodo Station (a 10 p.m.
news program) led its reportage and
devoted nearly its entire hour-long
broadcast to Japan’s qualification for
Soccer’s 2006 World Cup.
The final qualifier, against political nemesis
North Korea, had been broadcast live from
Thailand on TV Asahi, Hodo Station’s
network.
Sports Re-Import:
Examples
The news hour was filled with live interviews
with players, national team executives, and
coaches, along with in-studio analysis, and
remote feeds from bars and eating
establishments nationwide.
Well into the following day, news programs,
morning wake-up and wide-shows normally
dedicated to celebrity, fashion, gossip and
social problems devoted the bulk of their
programming to reports about the soccer
team’s success.
Sports Re-Import:
Examples
One week later, Hodo Station began their telecast
with side-by-side images of Ichiro and Hideki
Matsui. Each picture dissolved to game footage.
• First Ichiro was shown blasting a single off the
outfield wall, with the excited voiceover of an
American television announcer. As he barked
that this was Ichiro’s one thousandth hit in
America, the stadium was shown erupting in a
standing ovation.
• Ichiro was shown acknowledging the ovation
by tipping his batting helmet.
Sports Re-Import:
Examples
Cue to the next image: of Matsui connecting with a
pitch. Again an American announcer’s
enthusiastic voice-over could be heard: “it’s out
of the infield, it’s out of the outfield. Bye-bye
baseball. Home run, Hideki Matsui!”
Fade to two newscasters seated in the studio. The
male announcer gushing: “Japan’s Superstars.
We’ll show them later in the show. But first…”
and then the top (hard) news story of the day
began: wheels that fell off of a Japanese Air Lines
jet upon landing at Haneda.
Mediated Sportsport
Although Japan’s popular cultural
stage of globalization includes film,
music and fashion, the most locally
pervasive
and
influential
is
sportsports.
Ubiquitous Media . . .
Implicated are
indigenous media such
as television news,
entertainment
programming,
advertising, the
Internet and
publishing.
Relentless Mediation
Mediated Sportsport
Particularly news and advertising
Featuring Japanese athletes:
 Participating outside Japan, or
 Engaged in international competitions in
which Japanese athletes are/have been
pitted against foreign rivals
Media Effects:
Value-Added Mediation
Primary Media Effects






Attentiveness
Framing
Distortion Effects
Accretion
Magnification
Amplification
Attentiveness
The ubiquity of sportsports in any one
medium, as well as cumulatively across
media, creates:
• attentiveness
• even over-exposure
• exaggeration
of sportsports in contemporary Japanese
society.
Attentiveness
Source: Yomiuri Shimbun, February 2002
Sample: 3,000 Japanese aged 20 or older
A Media Effect?
Japanese professional baseball was the number-one
choice of fans for the eighth year in a row
 So what is all this noise about media, sport and
globalization?
It turns out that Major League Baseball was up six
percentage points over the previous year
Moreover, it cracked the top ten for the first time ever.
It is likely the result of Ichiro, Shinjo and Sasaki, taking
the “Export Challenge” (and the media choosing to
focus on it)
More on the Media Effect
The likely power of media in shaping public
consciousness and tastes comes through in the next
survey question.
 There, we see that Ichiro topped all Japanese athletes
-- foreign-based or domestic – by a whopping 2 to 1
margin
 Moreover, 5 of the 10 listed athletes are playing in
foreign leagues;
 Two other athletes – a marathoner and a speed skater
-- compete in foreign locations against international
fields;
 Only 3 are based primarily in Japan. All 3 play for the
Japanese cultural icon, the Yomiuri Giants baseball
team
Most Popular Players
Interest in Japanese Players
Overseas
71% of all respondents indicated that they
were "very interested" or "somewhat
interested" in the exploits of Japanese
players in the U.S.
 Over 70% of respondents between age 20 and
50 answered this way;
 80% of those in their thirties
By profession:
 88% of managers and professionals
 80% of students
Framing
About Frames
As most of you probably know, “Frame” is a
serviceable concept in communication
studies.
Over the years, it has been employed in the
analysis of:
 organizational structure (Tuchman
1978);
 elites (Gitlin 1980);
 hegemony (Hallin 1987);
 social process (Carragee and Roefs
2004).
Organizational Frames
Sociologists of Media long ago
demonstrated that news organizations
are guided by practices that structure
message delivery.
These include:
 “newsroom routines” that “frame”
(Goffman 1974) news . . .
 temporally, spatially and topically
(Tuchman 1978)
News Organizations,.
Routines, and Frames
This often results in news that “reads the
mood” of the surrounding world and
media consumers (e.g. Gitlin 1983)
 In this way, certain values are
legitimated and given preference over
others
Framing Sportsports
Invariably, reports on Japan’s sportsports
lift the players out of the game
 Emphasizing their achievements
 The players receive nearly exclusive
attention
 They take precedence over -- even
obviate attention to -- the
game/match, itself.
Frame from Form
in Japanese Sports News
The form of sports news is strikingly
similar among TV stations:
 Capsule summaries of the at bats of every
Japanese Major League baseball player
 The substitution pattern of Europeanbased Japanese soccer players
 Along with any pass, assist, shot on goal,
free kick or score that may have
occurred
 When available, interviews with the
players
Meaning from Frame
This formatic frame is employed also in
newspapers and on the Internet
 Providing a unified media voice
The message is about Japanese
performance out in the world.
 And, to the degree that individual
players serve as signifiers for nation,
then the frame spotlights Japan’s
performance on the world stage.
Ancillary / Derivative
Meanings
To the degree that these players are
almost exclusively male, a (spurious)
association is engendered:
• between individual existential
condition
• freedom, mobility, globality, and
achievement
• and male/ness.
The Baseball Export Frame
MLB Sportsports:
Individualist Frame
The focus, throughout, is
not on the game; rather
the individual Japanese
player toiling in the game.
The Soccer Export Frame
The identical process
occurs in the case
of Japan’s overseas
soccer players
 with every arrival in
a foreign city
detailed, every
practice session,
every meaningful
kick, assist, goal,
and substitution
Domestic Framing
This stands in contrast to the domestic
versions of the same sports
 As I have shown in other work (Holden
2003b)
Domestically, team-centered stories take
precedence over the individual player focus
 The game is told in story-form
In Japanese “Team” is
Spelled with an 愛
Because achievements tend only to be
reported as part of the game story . . .
• One result is that collectivities become the
invisible filter for understanding sporting
life INSIDE Japan.
• In this way the “myth” of collectivity is
reproduced
Comparative Framing
In short, discursive strategies differ between
domestic and foreign sportsports
Foreign coverage exists only due to the
presence of Japanese players . . .
Not because of the games or teams involved.
Comparing Content:
Key Findings
1. Prioritization: Global over
Local
2. Prioritization: Local in the
Global
3. Prioritization: Japanese over
Foreign
4. Story Structure Telling
Global and Local Differently
1. Prioritization:
Global over Local
In most TV news shows a main segment of
sports reportage concerns Sports Exports
 They are generally featured first or
else spotlighted as a tease prior to
commercial break.
 They often are placed ahead of the
domestic league games
2. Prioritization:
Local in the Global
At the same time, the only foreign
action shown are those games in
which Japanese players appear
 News from foreign leagues only
occasionally is presented;
 and then only highlights of foreign
players if they have accomplished a
major feat
Local in the Global:
An example
In 2002, the Anaheim Angels won the U.S. “World
Series” in seven games.
However, the tease for the Japanese news broadcast
that night was San Francisco Giant, Tsuyoshi Shinjo,
swinging at a pitch.
After the ad, the news highlighting Shinjo’s 9th inning
strikeout (and reminding us he was the first
Japanese to play in the World Series).
The only interview segment was with Shinjo
• Not the MVP of the series
• Not the winning manager
• Not even Shinjo’s star teammate, Barry Bonds
3. Prioritization:
Japanese over Foreign
Generally, the feats of foreign players
will take a back seat to those of
Japanese players
• even if those achievements are out of
the ordinary
Japanese over Foreign:
An example
Back in 2002 a Dodger player hit 4 home runs in one
game, tying a major league record
Yet, the only reason it made the Japanese news was
because Kazuhisa Ishii happened to be pitching for the
Dodgers.
 He was the frame around which the story was built.
 His strike-outs and troubled innings were shown first.
 His ultimate victory was noted.
 Only then was it reported: “By the way, Ishii’s
teammate, Shawn Green, hit 4 home runs”
4. Story Structure:
Telling Global and Local
Differently
As explained above, the clear difference between news
reports about Japanese and American games
featuring Japanese players is the structure of the
story.
• In the U.S. games, the action is decontextualized
• There are only reports about the Japanese players
or their teams
Japanese games, by contrast, are more traditionally
treated
 They are stories, told with heroes and villains,
 Engaged in a systematic unfolding of linked action
 There is context, drama and often a message
Distortion Effects
Media inflate the presence and influence of
Sportsports in the world
Three kinds of distortion can be
distinguished:
1. “accretion”
2. “amplification”
3. “magnification”
Accretion
Defined: the process of stockpiling images
Effect: lends a sense of constancy and
ubiquity
The accumulation of images – not of any
one player, but all players together –
produces a “global” awareness – a
hyperawareness – of sportsports within
the consciousness of knowledge
consumers.
Accretion
Taken a step further, it could be said that
this incessant appearance of sportsports
functions as a form of operant
conditioning.
• It primes viewers to regard sportsports
outside Japan
• AND see them as possessing
significance beyond indigenous
boundaries.
Accretion
In 2005, a typical MLB capsule included a
cross-country “relay” of reports lasting
minutes:
 2 Matsuis in New York
 Nomo in Florida
 Taguchi in St. Louis
 Iguchi in Chicago
 Ichiro in Seattle
 Ohtsuka in San Diego
Accretion
In 2005, a typical European soccer capsule
included multiple border crossings:
• Inamoto in England
• Okubo in Spain
• Nakata and Nakamura in Italy
• Takahara in Germany
• Ono in Holland.
Accretion
While not “unreal” the reportage was
contrived.
 For, the continued exhibition of these
players has an additive effect:
 day after day
 channel after channel
 program after program
 It inflates the presence of sportsports in
the world beyond Japanese borders.
Accretion
 When this over-inflation becomes translated into
perceived impact of sportsports on their respective
sports, this becomes “amplification”.
 Accretion differs insofar as it refers to the simple daily
appearance of these players on screen:




in practice
in the interview room
in games
(not to mention in advertisements between media reports).
 Such repetition produces a particular mediated effect:
aggregated images of exports manufactures a hyperpresence and, ultimately, efficacy
Amplification
Defined: the process of inflating the size or
presence of sportsports by according
them over-abundance of attention and
detail
• individually or aggregately
Effect: creates impressions out of
proportion to prevailing reality
Amplification Exemplified
In June 2005 Ichiro advanced toward
1,000 hits for his American career. His
effort was virtually ignored in the
American media.
Why?
• There are well over 100 batters in major
league history who have garnered 2,000
career hits
• 25 batters with over 3,000 hits
• And two with over 4,000.
Amplification Exemplified
So, although Ichiro’s 1,000 constitute the
third fastest tally in MLB history, the
number, itself, has been exceeded by a
legion of players too numerous to list (and
many long forgotten).
Nevertheless, in Japan this was a milestone
worthy of fetishistic attention
A case study of amplification incarnate.
Amplification Exemplified
Or . . . consider the MVP vote in 2004, when
Ichiro placed fifth.
This came as a shock -- raising claims of
racism -- by many Japanese fans.
For in this year Ichiro set numerous records:
 first player to secure 200 hits or more in his
first four MLB seasons
 most hits collected in four seasons
 most hits in a single season.
Amplification Exemplified
Comparatively, wasn’t Ichiro better than the MVP,
Vladimir Guerrero, who had:
 206 hits (56 less than Ichiro)
 a .337 batting average (.035 points less than
Ichiro)
 39 home runs
 126 runs batted in
. . . Or so Japanese critics claimed
Amplification Exemplified
Such surprise was a function (and strong evidence) of the
amplification effect.
Ichiro’s achievements were daily fixtures in Japanese
media, commanding prime daily newscast time. News
stations:
• placed a life-size likeness of Ichiro on their set
• Built a holographic staircase with Ichiro darumas
moving upward with each hit garnered
• even stodgy NHK allowed its announcer to lift his
arms triumphantly when Ichiro finally broke George
Sisler’s 84 year-old record, exclaiming “banzai!”.
Magnification
Defined: The process by which sportsport
activities are unduly extolled, the respect
due them over-inflated, or their
achievements are exaggerated in ways
that confer greater significance than
perhaps they deserve.
Effect: audiences tend to come to see
players as more central and significant
Magnification Exemplified
A comparison of how sportsports are
reported in the host and home country
media captures magnification.
• On June 21, 2005, the headline in the U.S.
edition of Yahoo!Sports was “Yankees bury
Rays with 13 runs in eighth”.
• The Japanese headline in Yahoo!Sports was
“Hideki Matsui, praises his effort in a huge
comeback victory.”
Magnification Exemplified
The US version led with a paragraph about
“one stunning inning in which the New York
Yankees appeared to exorcise three months
of frustration.”
• It singling out Bernie Williams and Gary Sheffield
for specific mention
By contrast, the Japanese version led with a
sentence gushing that “Hideki Matsui hit his
ninth home run (a solo shot) while collecting
four hits and two runs batted in.”
Magnification Exemplified
The 13-run inning was the second sentence
in the Japanese story, while in the
American story, Matsui’s name appeared in
the lead sentence of the ninth paragraph
• That paragraph read: “Sheffield, Alex
Rodriguez and Hideki Matsui hit consecutive
homers in the eighth.”
• A later Japanese version of the story adopted
the three consecutive home run angle for its
headline, though again leading with Matsui’s
name, followed by Sheffield and Rodriguez – a
shift from the actual scoring chronology.
Magnification
There are (many) other examples of this.
Such comparisons reveal that:
• Japanese stories tend to be locallycentered, insular, microscopic, and
individually-based;
• American stories, by contrast, are
generally holistic, context-based,
macroscopic, and historically-rooted.
Summing Up So Far
In Japanese media, distortion concerning
sportsports is pervasive and continuous.
This is not without macro-sociological impact.
Daily reproduction of sportsports stems from
intentional positioning by institutions of mass
communication of particular images in the
consciousness of information consumers
 what Berger and Luckmann (1967) referred
to as the “symbolic universes” of the media
audience.
Summing Up So Far
Like the mechanisms of communication,
themselves, these symbolic worlds are
comprised of precious “information space”.
• Whatever topic is selected and inserted into that
space mitigates the appearance of other topics.
In the case of the media, themselves, one or
more topics must be reduced, cancelled,
ignored, silenced, reassigned and/or
deemphasized to accommodate reports on
sportsports.
Summing Up So Far
It is not only the presence, but the
constant appearance, of sportsports that
is significant.
• Sportsports become an endemic, taken-forgranted element of everyday life.
• Japan’s information consumers cannot
ignore them
• Moreover, given that the media frame is
also one of successful performance
(generally overseas), sportsports are seen:
• in macro, essentialized terms;
• in ways that speak about nation and national
success.
More Value-Added Mediation:
Other Effects





International Equivalence
Global Positioning
Nation Centering
Boundary Blurring/Status Shifting
Foreign Gaze
The effects just described were identified as “concepts”
meaning that they can be thought of as ways of assessing
media activity in other contexts (not simply Japan). The 5
listed here, though, seem to be mediated effects that are
exclusive to Japanese media.
International Equivalence
Generally the skill level of the average
European or South American
professional soccer player exceeds
that of the average Japanese player.
However, pictures, highlights, or
accounts of Japanese sportsports
alongside their foreign counterparts,
can have a de facto leveling effect
International Equivalence
For example, a digest show (such as “J Super Soccer
Plus”) or sports corners on the evening news show
extraordinary passes, dribbles, goals by Europeanbased foreigners, followed by clips of Japanese
players (often simple touches on the pitch).
While a discerning viewer might appreciate the
qualitative difference between a brilliantly struck free
kick by Roberto Carlos and a simple midfield run by
Nakata, the result for less critical consumers may be a
perception of comparability.
Shared pitch, in short, may translate into shared ability.
International Equivalence
Since Japanese players compete in the leagues where
such highlights are produced, Japanese sportsports are,
logically and via association, capable of such physical
feats, themselves.
In truth, here stands another distortion process at work:
one of exaggeration.
 This same process of exaggeration exists when
Japanese golfers finish well down the list of names on
the leaderboard (golf) or lose in two or three sets
(tennis).
The message communicated goes beyond participation
and inclusion toward effective equivalence; domestic
athletes holding stature and ability on a par with the
foreign competitors they challenge.
Global Positioning
Global Positioning
In 2005 Ai Miyazato, a 19 year old female golfer,
paired with Rui Kitada to win the inaugural
Women’s World Cup of Golf in South Africa,
then placed second in the Australian Ladies
Masters tournament.
The following day, newspapers and television
news adopted the identical frame:
• “Sekai no Ai-chan” (The World’s Little Ai)
• “Sekai no Miyazato Ai” (The World’s Miyazato
Ai).
Soon thereafter, the media dubbed her “Japan’s
Tiger Woods”.
Global Positioning
The use of sportsports to position Japan in the
world occurs with great regularity.
 One example of positioning can be found in
the nightly sports show, Suporuto (Sports)
 It presents European soccer by country
(England, Spain, France, Germany, Italy,
Holland).
 After etching geographic boundaries onscreen, player portraits – along with name
and nationality – are intoned by an
announcer (in English and Japanese).
 Then individual highlights appear.
Global Positioning
In 2005, Hodo Station adopted a comparable
approach for its baseball reports
• placing an over-sized map of the United States
behind the newscasters.
• There, the faces of every Japanese MLB player
were posted, located in their team’s city.
In this way, Japan was positioned in America via
its native sons.
If the point were lost, one night the anchor
turned to the sports reporter and asked: “Well,
how did the American Japanese do today?”
Global Positioning
The subtext of these daily communiqués is:
“we Japanese play in leagues and
competitions around the world.
Our sports are global;
our nation is not sited in one
geographical place;
it transpires in many places, at once.”
Nation-Centering
The chest-thumping involving nation is
neither uniform nor totalized. Nor is it
entirely jingoistic. But it is pervasive.
In the 2005 Women’s U.S. Open, Japanese
media (TV, newspapers, Internet ) devoted
full coverage to Miyazato Ai’s American
debut.
• For the Nikkei Shimbun on-line, Miyazato
was among the top six front page news
items for June 24.
• No other sports topic was listed on this
political-economic journal’s start page.
Nation-Centering
Inside, a special golf section was devoted
to the tourney, with the headline: “Yosen
Ochi Shita Nihon Jo-o” (Japanese Queen
Misses Final Cut).
• The article’s lead announced: “With a
two day score of 78, Miyazato Ai failed to
make the cut – the fifth consecutive year
that Japan’s top money-earner failed to
make the final round.”
Nation-Centering
This example captures how sportsports – even
in individual sports – are employed as
surrogates for nation.
As for nation-based competitions (such as
volleyball’s Grand Prix or soccer’s World
Cup), consider TV advertisements for the
former
• there the entire 15 second spot consisted of a
rippling hinomaru superimposed on a grandstand
• a voiceover of (presumably) the gathered throng,
rhythmically chanted as they clapped in unison:
“Nippon… Nippon… Nippon”.
Nation-Centering
When Japan’s soccer team qualified for the
2006 World Cup, it was the exclusive news
story on every TV station.
• Reporters were transmogrified into
cheerleaders, gushing “Great! Great! We
did it!”
• News anchors became commentators,
exclaiming: “Congratulations Japan”
• Every morning and wide show the following
day devoted saturation coverage of the
nation’s qualification
Nation-Centering . . .
Boundary Blurring
(Japan’s
Women’s Team will
appear in the Athens’ Olympics
tournament)
Boundary Blurring /
Status Shifting
“Infotainment” is a major rhetorical devise on
Japanese television (Ergul 2004), where hard
news has been tabloidized -- and even
trivialized -- by merger with entertainment
tropes and forms.
I would argue the sportsports reflect another
kind of genre spanning: where “hard” and
“sports” are mixed.
• Sports are treated as both information and
entertainment
• And sportsports are a proximate cause of genre
melding and, thus, boundary blurring.
Boundary Blurring /
Status Shifting: Examples
As mentioned earlier, during the 2006 World
Cup Qualification, TV stations devoted
nearly the entirety of their news programs
to the story, covering every conceivable
angle.
• interviews with players and coaches
• reaction from Japanese fans in bars and on
the street
• comments from German citizens (where
Japan would play)
• reaction from newscasts around the world
Boundary Blurring /
Status Shifting
This was something more than a one-off
involving a unique event. It reflects the ongoing status shift concerning sports in society.
Whannel (1992:123-4) has stated that “sports”
was once a special preserve (within media)
• separate from the rest of the social world
• to defend and communicate conservative
ideas and practices
• create the illusion of an apolitical enclave
Boundary Blurring /
Status Shifting
Today we are witnessing a steady march of
sports out of that insular space; toward
the center of daily life.
Powered in large part by sportsports,
sports in Japanese media has bled
through previously fixed boundaries,
taking residence outside defined
“corners“ of news programs or sections
of newspapers and magazines.
Boundary Blurring /
Status Shifting
This can be seen beyond cases of national
reference. In 2006 a ten p.m. newscast:
• Covered a hard news story for about ten
minutes, concerning a hostage crisis in
Cambodia involving Japanese children.
• Next was footage of a Jamaican sprinter
setting the world record in the 100 meter
dash.
• Following this was a harder/local story
involving the alleged defamation of a doctor
by Japanese journalist, Yoshiko Sakurai.
Foreign Gaze
Two major filters of sportsports are news
and advertising. These media differ
though in ways that we might
characterize in terms of “proximity”
• News is produced from an insider’s point
of view.
• Advertising often adopts an outsider’s
view
Foreign Gaze:
Foreign Gaze:
News, from the Inside
News reporters are Japanese, who
observe and interview Japanese
athletes for a Japanese audience.
The clips of athletic performances have
been selected and spliced together by
Japanese information producers for
domestic consumption.
Foreign Gaze:
Ads, from the Outside
In Ads:
• The products are often Japanese, as is the
sportsport spokesperson.
• However, the action often transpires in
situ – in the (overseas) venues where
sportsports toil
• It features co-mingling between
sportsports and “foreigners”.
• A major theme is how foreigners view
sportsports.
Foreign Gaze:
Ad Examples
In a series of ads in 2003, Shinji Ono, a soccer
sportsport in Holland was presented interacting
with Dutch children.
The first ad centered on a small girl following Ono
through a supermarket in awe.
The next ad employed the same girl joined by a
young boy, who lunched and cavorted in a field
with Ono, windmill in the background.
A final ad featured the two children, chasing Ono
through the streets of Rotterdam on their bikes.
Foreign Gaze:
Ad Examples
The central idea in the Ono series was
acceptance by foreign others and Japanese
fluency in foreign climes, culture and
lifestyle.
This thread has been played out in ads
featuring:
• Hideki Matsui for Kirin beer
• Ichiro Suzuki for a health drink
• Naohiro Takahara for JCB charge card
• Hidetoshi Nakata for Canon cameras and
Coca-Cola.
The Meaning of Foreign Gaze
A decade ago it was domestic athletes such as the sumo
rikishi Wakanohana or foreign athletes (like Andy
Hug) who starred in locally-consumed sports such as
K-1.
Today, by contrast, product endorsements most often
involve athletes located overseas.
Viewed from a communication perspective, it is the gaze
that is crucial. Whether it is Dutch children, Italian
models or slack-jawed café-goers in Seattle, the
repeated focus of ads is on the admiration accorded
Japanese sportsports.
Outside Over Inside
“MOVE THE WORLD”
Outside Over Inside
What of local Japanese heroes back home?
• Are the only sportsports commanding Japanese media
attention sports exports?
• Is this stage of Japan’s globalization career dominated
exclusively by external vision?
In fact, domestic-based athletes do receive treatment.
The most visible exemplar until last year was Shinjo, a
former MLB export who, upon returning to play in
Japan, cashed in on numerous product-endorsements.
• Of course, he is nearly an outsider: his personality is
offbeat by conventional Japanese standards and he
has significatory power as a “foreign import”
Outside Over Inside
Other domestic foreigners (e.g. Bob Sapp, a former
U.S. football player and now K-1 fighter; Akebono, a
former yokozuna and Hawaiian import), have carved
out spaces for themselves in the domestic media
(mainly advertising and variety-shows)
Current dominant foreign stars – for instance
Asashoryu in sumo and any number of soccer and
baseball imports – are almost entirely ignored.
Still, few indigenous athletes – Japanese or foreign –
sport TV endorsement deals or consistently feature
in daily news recaps.
Outside Over Inside
In short, at present, the foreign sportsport is
favored over the domestic athlete.
Only on rare occasions are athletes at home
spotlighted -- as was the 2005 case of the
Hanada brothers – former yokuzuna
Takanohana and Wakanohana – who generated
a fortnight of non-stop news and wideshow
attention contesting their father’s estate.
• There, it wasn’t sports as much as stories of
sibling hatred, family favoritism, and marital
discord that stoked media (and public) interest.
Conclusions
Conclusions: Identity
In his widely-read tract about Japan’s modern
reinvention(s), Buruma (2004:7) summarized:
“overconfidence, fanaticism, a shrill sense of
inferiority, and a sometimes obsessive preoccupation
with national status – all have played their parts in
the history of modern Japan.”
Certainly these tendencies are all on display in the case
of sportsports.
Through sportsports we behold phenomena that both
reflect and feed Japan’s definitions and perceptions of
self.
Conclusions: Mediation
It is media -- conveyors of information about
sportsports – that re/produce discourse about
national identity.
• TV is a dominant medium in this regard
• As for TV, Yoshimi (2003) has said that “TV was the
central medium in the construction of this postwar
nation state (484).”
I would call it a “binding mechanism”
• linking Japanese citizen to State
• connecting language/cultural communities through
the re/production and ultimately inculcation of shared
beliefs, practices and values.
Conclusions: Bindingness
Today, TV’s bindingness emanates from both
content and form
• Content: It continuously cycles a nearly uniform
set of themes – most often centering on shared
cultural values, practices and national objects;
• Form: It also employs a set of strategies vis-àvis these finite objects which have the effect of
eliciting an emotional response from the
audience.
Conclusions: Emotions
Thus, both theme and approach serve as
emotional unifier.
The binding strategies all revolve around the
phenomenon of sportsports.
These objects form a phenomenological set which
underscore nation and, hence, support the
formulation of national-consciousness.
Conclusions: Nationalism
This underscores Whannel’s (1992:206) claim
that “in the world of sport as seen on TV…
we are united… above all, by the constant
appeal to our sense of national identity.”
In this way, this “popular cultural nationalism”
(or better “sports nationalism”) is another
kind of “nationalism of Japan” to add to the
comprehensive list advanced by McVeigh
(2004).
Conclusions: Globalization
In many ways these conclusions demonstrate
the way in which global processes work to
bolster the local.
• Inside is tied to outside in ways that can’t
be easily seen, but also which are surprising
in their results.
This synergy, certainly, has the capability of
blurring or even loosening societal and
cultural understandings of indigenous and
exogenous.
Conclusions:
Sportsports as Macro-phenomena
Despite this, though, what emerges most
clearly is how sportsports have served to
unleash an overwhelming, continuous,
unified, macro-oriented discourse.
It is an ideational stream centered on Japan’s
national identity.
And, in the hands of Japanese media, it is a
rather univocal identity: one that centers on
Japanese achievement in the world. Not
simply the sporting world, but the sporting
world qua social world.
Thank You for Your Attention