T.J.M. Holden
Professor, Mediated Sociology
Department of Multi-Cultural Societies
Graduate School of International
Cultural Studies
Tohoku University
Sendai, Japan
Frame This:
How Japanese media use sport to
support cultural messages about
nation and gender
Disclaimer
Even more than usual, I have to state that
this is a work in progress.
Which is a self-assured, if not disingenuous,
way of saying that I have no idea what my
data is saying.
Well, actually, I have an idea, which I will tell
you about.
First I will tell you what I thought I was going
to talk about, then talk about what I have
been observing.
Disclaimer
Some of this has to do with gender – the
construction of it, the uses to which it is put
– through sports/media;
But more of it has to do with other interesting
processes
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Some related to nationalism
Some related to community
Some related to intimacy
Most related to how media – and in particular
television – in Japan, communicates with its
audience.
To Begin: About Frames
As most of you probably know, “Frame” is a
serviceable concept in communication
studies.
Because this is so, it has become popular
over the years, associated with the
analysis of:
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organizational structure (Tuchman 1978);
elites (Gitlin 1980);
hegemony (Hallin 1987);
social process (Carragee and Roefs 2004).
To Begin: About Frames in Japan
Looking at Japan, and then sports
reporting in Japan, we can easily
discern frames in reporting.
Content analyzing these frames through
a social-anthropological lens, we can
say that they can be traced to and are
rooted in cultural history.
To Begin: About Frames in Japan
In particular, media frames have tended
to focus on issues of Japan’s global
positioning.
(Japan’s Women’s Team will appear in the Athens’ Olympics
tournament)
To Begin: About Frames in Japan
Mirroring its uneven history
of isolation and
imperialism, Japanese
sports reports are selfconsciously focused on
matters of:
Increasing globality
 Relations with the “outside”
 Reflections on the who and
what “inside”

To Begin: About Frames in Japan
Success in the “larger world”
 Acceptance by the world’s others
 The meaning of “Japaneseness”
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And, of course… Nationalism
Where Gender Enters the Picture
Where Gender Enters the Picture
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It is typical in media-sport studies to run
down the list of “usual suspects”.
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Beyond nation/alism, gender is invariably
included on that list.

And certainly, in Japanese media-sport
reports, such frames can be found.
Gendered Frames:
Diminished Power
The first and most obvious of this is
how images of power gets mediated…
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For instance, and as we’ve already seen
in Ms. Ito’s presentation, kawaii (or cute)
ji (lettering) and icons, as well as pink
script are employed when women speak.
This is a trope widely used in enka (folk
singing) and also karaoke, therefore has
historico-cultural support in other media
 So, too, does the color convention assist in
gender labeling and gender definition

Gendered Frames:
Diminished Power
Beyond this, women are often presented in
ways that can be seen as minimizing or
diminishing them.

For instance, the women’s volleyball team is
generally referred to by the name of the coach
(and nation): “Yanagimoto Japan”
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This follows the convention of men’s soccer which
was called “Okada Japan” in 1998 and “Trossier
Japan” in 2002.
Still, female identity is lost in the process, as their
existence is placed beneath that of their male coach

Which happens less with Mens teams where the
players are spotlighted for interviews and treated as if
they have strong, independent, distinct personalities.
Differential Depictions of
Men and Women?
Differential Depictions of
Men and Women?
One obvious question is whether men
and women are framed differently.
Following the “frame-as-reflection-of
cultural-history” thesis, one might
venture the following…
Men as Lone Wolves?
And Women as Group-oriented?
Credence to This Viewpoint

In fact, this view can find large support in daily
Japanese media coverage.
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But some of this has to do with the kinds of sports
that Japanese women and men excel in.
 Often for women it is team sports such as
volleyball, soccer, softball, basketball, and field
hockey.
 In the case of the run-up to the last Olympics, it
seemed to be only team sports in which women
were succeeding.
 Although individual women ultimately fared
better in their events than the women’s teams
 And it was the men’s gymnastic team that
caught the imagination of the nation.
Credence to This Viewpoint
Interestingly, although there has been
some small success for men in the
individualist sports of swimming and
golf, many of the men identified as
successful engage in team sports such
as baseball and soccer
But, they are often singled out as individuals
 And even where women excel in individual
sports such as golf or tennis, they are often
presented in group or dyadic (interactive) ways.
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Credence to This Viewpoint
Such depictions (of female individuals) are often treated
by media in ways that may neutralize their agency.
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For instance, a golfer’s on-going feud with her
father, the caddy, may be spotlighted.
A famous judo player, married to a professional
baseball player, announces her pregnancy and
declares: I have won gold under my maiden name,
under my married name, and now I will win gold as
a mother.
Two world-class swimmers are teammates, and
rivals; yet, the focus on an extended story is their
companionship and mutual support.
But somewhere along the line…
This idea
breaks down.
The Limits of Cultural Stereotypes
It is possible
to locate
women alone,
facing the
world by
themselves.
The Limits of Cultural Stereotypes
And men
who are
actively
engaged.
Thus…
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There seem to be other things going on
with Media/Sports/Frames than
“traditional” gender

What I have begun to think about – and
what I want to talk about today – is how
Media/Sports/Frames often play with or
else employ gender in various, often
unexpected ways to enhance overall,
alternatively-framed communicative power.
Before Getting There…
I will briefly summarize some of the
ways I have been looking at Sports
and Media
Both together and separately
 As a way of better understanding where
I’m going…
 … which (to spoil the punchline) is
EMOTION
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Media Effects
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Framing
Distortion Effects
Accretion
Magnification
Amplification
In talking about how media treat “Sportsports” (Holden
2006a, b), I have developed concepts inductively. While they
all differ in nature and probable effect, they might be
collectively summarized under the rubric “Value Added
Mediation”
Media Effects
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Framing
Distortion Effects
Accretion
Magnification
Amplification
And although they take a specific form in
Japan – in part because of their association
with “Sportsports” -- these concepts likely
have applicability in other media contexts,
independent of sports reports.
Media Effects:
Value-Added Mediation
In Japan, though, these
effects have arisen
because over the past
decade, every night
during baseball season,
on every news station
on Japanese television,
a segment has been
devoted to the
performance of
Japanese baseball
players in the major
leagues.
Media Effects:
Value-Added Mediation
Each segment is treated in nearly
identical ways: the player is
lifted out of the game context
and highlighted
 every at-bat is chronicled
 Post-game interviews are
reported, or
 (since there are now so
many Japanese players
playing overseas), their
daily “line” (i.e. number of
hits out of number of atbats, as well as their current
batting average) is
inscribed as superscript.
Foreign Sportsports:
Individualist Frame
The focus, throughout, is
not on the game; rather
the individual Japanese
player toiling in the game.
The Baseball Export Frame
The Soccer Export Frame
The identical process
occurs in the case of
Japan’s overseas
soccer players
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with every arrival in a
foreign city detailed,
every practice
session, every
meaningful kick or
assist or goal, and
every substitution in
or out of a game.
In Japanese “Team” is Spelled with
an イ
In the case of both baseball and soccer,
these reports ALWAYS take
precedence over the results of the
match.
Individuals lifted out of the collective
contest
 To the degree that these players are
almost exclusively male, a (spurious)
association is engendered between
individual existential condition and
male/ness.

In Japanese “Team” is Spelled with
an イ
As I have shown elsewhere (Holden 2002),
formatically, such reportage differs from that
associated with the domestic game.
 There, a story form concerning the battle
between the two Japanese teams is favored over
the feats of individual players.
 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.
More Value-Added Mediation
International Equivalence
 Global Positioning
 Nation Centering
 Boundary Blurring/Status Shifting
 Foreign Gaze
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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.
More Value-Added Mediation
Their contextual exclusivity is based on
bounding factors such as:
Japan’s historical geopolitical position
 Its relations with the west
 Its long-standing view of uniqueness and
national superiority
 It countervailing, long-standing sense of
cultural inferiority
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Bindingness
These elements also “work” effectively as
communications because of a specific
Media-Society relation in Japan
 Historically, Japanese TV has been said to
be a national unifier (Yoshimi 2003)
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The claim is that TV helped standardize rituals
and enabled collective sharing of nationoriented content
It has been asserted that this ideological power
has declined with time.
Bindingness
I would disagree.
TV serves, even today, as a “binding
mechanism”
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A communal unifier
Which has particular resonance given Japan’s
deeply embedded, structuring principle, “uchi”
[collective realm]
Effectively, the medium’s function is the circulation
of cultural content throughout the nation, serving to
unify the collectivity into a singular national
community
The major “trope” – or better, frame – employed by
TV to achieve this end is “emotion”.
Explaining Gendered Frames:
Bindingness and Emotional Distance
Here let’s focus on gender as a way
of better appreciating the concepts
of bindingness and emotion
 Bindingness – which is a measure of
the success in forging a community
– is often achieved via emotional
connection.
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Explaining Gendered Frames:
Bindingness and Emotional Distance
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In examples presented during this talk, this
has the (seeming) effect of reproducing
gender images
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But in fact may have less to do with gender
(that is distinction based on sexual
characteristics) than with audience-subject
proximity and, as a consequence,
ultimately, national unity
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We can refer to this as “emotio-gendered
frames”
Explaining Gendered Frames:
Bindingness and Emotional Distance
The way that emotional connection is
achieved is, in severable (but
supporting) parts:
Linguistic
 Historical
 Geographical
 National
 Cultural
 Communal

Emotio-Gendered Frames:
The example of linguisitic tricks
The linguisitc: “chan” is a diminutive – or
term of endearment – associated with the
following female athletes:
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Ai Miyazato (golfer), Ai Fukuhara (table tennis),
Yokomine Sakura (golfer)
It is used for no male athletes, save for the
golfer Maruyama Shigeki (which will be
explained later)
It is not generally used for Japan’s female tennis
players or swimmers or team players (volleyball,
soccer, field hockey)
Emotio-Gendered Frames:
Explained via historico-cultural dimensions
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The diminutive creates proximity.
Most often it is linked to athletes (or other personalities)
introduced into the “national family” at an early age
 In the case of Ai Fukuhara when she was in grade
school; in the case of Ai Miyazato when she was in her
mid-teens
The male exception, Maruyama, received his name when
he was a rather rotund golfer, known for his sunny
disposition.
 The image (of a jolly, cuddly, child-like personality)
was cultivated in an ad campaign – rather than
everyday life; the name stuck long after the ad
campaign – and his pudgy look – faded.
Explaining Gendered Frames:
Bindingness through Emotional
Proximity
The geographical dimensions of this labeling
lie in the earlier discussion of “uchi”.
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An essentialized, if not essentially
contested – concept.
It assumes that all on the inside share a
common set of understandings, history,
values, ways of doing and seeing.
For sportsports, these gendered “chans”,
are the cultural objects shared within the
national community over time.
Making Emotions
Making Emotions
This is perhaps the largest category of value-added
Mediation.
It operates independent of Sportsports
• Being a major trope in Japanese television (see
Painter 1996, Ergul 2004, Holden and Ergul
forthcoming)
• It also seems to serve as a central logic in the use
of other media, such as cell phone (Holden 2005).
The Uses of Emotion
However, it is not only emotion that is
used…
Rather: emotion wed to images – if not
conceptions -- of gender
Aside from gender, this serves
“bindingness”
And, hence, the re/production of
national community.
Gender-Added Frames
For instance, of late, there have been a
large number of women in sporting
news in recent weeks:
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Ai Fukuhara playing ping-pong on a club
team in China
Ai Miyazato challenges in an American
Ladies Masters golf event
The International Volleyball World Grand
Prix featuring the Japanese women’s
team
Gender-Added Frames
So, too, has there been a growing
infatuation with the American golfing
“sensation”, Michelle Wie:
Seeking to qualify for a men’s tournament
 Also in Amateur match play competition
against men
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Out of (Normal) Frame
Of note was this:
On one night, a major story was
Michelle Wie’s embarking on Amateur
match play against a field of men (and
winning).
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The interview was with her, assessing her
performance
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And, unlike many stories involving women, was ONLY
with her.
There were no other supporting or evaluative
statements.
A Reversal of Frames
But consider this:
On that same night, on the same station, there
was an extended documentary-style profile
of a male marathon runner.
 The frame was not about the runner’s
performances
 It centered on his relationship with his father
• A man who nurtured and supported the
athlete since the death of his wife (the
runner’s mother) when the boy was in
elementary school.
Emotion-laden Frames: an example
The father was shown toiling in the kitchen while his
son trained;
He was caught on camera demurring when the son
asked him to attend the competition in Europe;
 The father explains after the son leaves: “I would
only be in the way. I wouldn’t want him worrying
about me. I want him to concentrate.”
He does, however write a letter to his son, which the
boy reads in a car driving him to training camp.
 The letter speaks of the father’s deep feeling for the
boy.
 When asked for his reaction, the boy, clearly moved,
says “If I’d received this letter from a girl, I would be
happy.”
Television Tropes and the Invention
of Reality
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As an aside, it should be noted that this
“letter reading in front of the camera” is a
contrived method, one that is standard in
Japanese TV – especially talk shows;
 It’s aim is to stimulate the release of real
feelings (on camera) by reading a contrived
letter that, though authentically authored,
has been crafted at the behest of the media
reporting the unfolding.
A Reversal of Frames
In short, the frames of these 2 stories went
against expectations; against what tends to
be the established way of viewing men and
women.
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The “nurtured, can’t-stand-alone” frame was
accorded to the male athlete;
The frame involving a “lone wolf” dueling out in
the world was accorded to the woman;
 Although it must be recognized that she was
a foreign woman (therefore, distinct from
national community / emotional proximity).
Emotion-Added Frames
Beyond gender, though, what may better explain the
why behind the how in Japanese Media-Sport, is
emotion.
 Emotion is the reason for the selection and
communication of contemporary frames on TV
 Emotion is also particular to (though not
limited to) sports and news on TV.
In short: What such communications do is seek to
forge an empathic connection – often actively
playing off of gender, but also in some ways
“beyond” or larger than gender.
Beyond Gender:
A Stream of Emotion
It must be observed that the Reversal of Frame is rare.
More common is the “emotio-gendered frames” that
follow cultural expectations. For example:
 Ai, the 14 year old ping pong player, is asked in
a Chinese interview about “boyfriends” and her
stunned, uncomprehending reaction is shown
not once, but twice, with commentary by the
newscasters in Japan.
 The rivalry between Okinawa-based golfers
Miyazato Ai and Yokomine Sakura is a common
frame in news reports.
 So too, “Sakura-chan’s” public feuds with her
outspoken father, who caddies but most often
chides her in front of the cameras.
Emotion in Social Life
In theorizing Emotion in Social Life,
Layder (2004) focused on various
uses and abuses of emotion.
 Doing so, he emphasized:
the struggle for control and
 the search for human security
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These were his key elements of the
emotional equation underlying social
relations.
Emotion in Mediated Society
Conspicuously absent in his writing was the
role media play in generating or responding
to human emotions
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The role of emotion in the consumption and use
of information or communication was ignored.
Missing was recognition of the importance
of media content in stimulating human
interest by forging connection; (or, as in the
case of video games, say) stimulating
desire or expenditure of time, energy,
money.
 This is a powerful dimension of much of
commercial media activity.
Conclusions:
About Media and Society
Whannel (1998), among others has
demonstrated how sport has come to
command an increasingly large
position in society.
 So, too, has Rowe (1999) along with
others, argued that sport is coming to
command an increasingly large
position in media.
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Conclusions:
About Media-Sport-Emotional Frames
It is also true, though, that the directionality of
such processes of accession is not entirely
one way.
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Thus, as sport has commanded more societal
space, so too have the structure, processes,
institutions, and themes of import in society come to
invade sport.
And similarly, as sport has commanded more media
space, so too have the structure, processes,
institutions, and themes of importance in media
come to invade sport.
Conclusions:
About Media-Sport-Society
What this means is the transfer of
certain key concerns to our
encounters with communications
about sport. For instance:
stratified or otherwise differential
economic, social and political relations
 deeper social processes such as
economic accumulation, consumerism,
and representations of race and gender
(to name a few)
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Conclusions:
About Media-Sport-Emotional Frames
In the case of the media space issue, this
means that some of the tropes and many of
the logics of communication have
transferred to communication about sport.
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As we have seen in this paper, this means,
above all, an increasing amount of emotional
themes or emotion-inducing presentational
techniques.
This is not without effects on the subjects that
get presented.
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Be they about men, women, ethnic/racial group, nation,
community, or any other socially-definable thingI
Conclusions:
About Emotion in Media-SportSocietal Theorization
Above all, this means that the subjects of
Media/Sport may get presented in ways that
tug at emotions.
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It may, as Ergul will show in his IAMCR
presentation Thursday, impact on economy.
It may, as Prieler will show in his forthcoming
presentation in this section, impact on national
identity.
This may, as Ito showed in her earlier
presentation in this session, impact on Gender.
Thank You Very Much…
For your kind attention