Sport zwischen Markt und öffentlicher Dienstleistung: zur Zukunft des Breitensports in Japan

"Volkswirtschaftliche Erwartungen werden auch in Japan an den Sport gehegt. Diese beschränken sich nicht auf den professionellen Bereich, sondern erfassen über sozial- und kulturpolitische Zielvorstellungen auch den Breitensport. Dieser Beitrag geht der Frage nach, unter welchen Rahmenbedingungen und mit welchen Konsequenzen der Staat und substaatliche Akteure auf lokaler Ebene bei der Verteilung öffentlicher Ressourcen für den Breitensport agieren. Besonderes Augenmerk wird der Etablierung einer am deutschen Vereinsgedanken orientierten Sportvereinslandschaft gewidmet, die zur Steigerung der im internationalen Vergleich niedrigen Sportbeteiligungsquote der Bevölkerung führen soll. Eine Auswertung von Experteninterviews und offiziellen Daten unterstützt die Annahme, dass zentralstaatlichen Versuchen einer von oben gesteuerten Breitensportpolitik in spätmodernen Gesellschaften enge Grenzen gesetzt sind." (Autorenreferat)"Professional and amateur sports in Japan are both expected to yield economic benefits. This article focuses on mapping the conditions of recent sports policy changes in Japan, and their consequences. Particular attention is dedicated to the reshapening of the Japanese sports environment according to the German model of associational sport ('Vereinssport'), which is expected to improve Japanese sports participation rates. Expert interviews and the analysis of public sports programs suggest that the top-down approach of the sports administration probably will not sufficiently enhance amateur sports in Japan's late modernity." (author's abstract

Global Events and Soft Power Dreams in East Asia

Mega-events, which Roche (2000:1) famously defined as large-scale cultural events of international significance and mass popular appeal, have also been assessed and praised as hallmarks of modernity. Their design, structure and organization largely resonate with key issues of modernity, providing host cities with unique opportunities for place-making and place-branding. Unlike any other global event, sport mega-events also offer the opportunity for an enormous cultural celebration. They bring the nations of the world together to compete in sports under commonly agreed rules and regulations. And as far as television spectacles go, there is nothing that can rival the Olympic Games or the Football World Cup. But these mega-events take place within fractured social structures and amid enormous inequalities that persist and develop over time (Horne and Manzenreiter 2006)

Diaspora ohne Heimat: Einfluss der Rückkehrmigration auf japanische Auswanderergemeinschaften in Südamerika

Currently more than 2.5 million Americans living on the South and North American continents are Nikkei or descendants of Japanese migrants. The history of their forefathers’ emigration, particularly to Northern America and Brazil, has attracted considerable scholarly attention. Their interest in issues of living in the diaspora, the meaning of ethnicity and citizenship has been renewed by the recent wave of sojourner migration by Latin Americans of Japanese origin into Japan. Virtually nothing is known so far about the Japanese settlements of minor size, and – more to the point of this study –, of the impact of “return migration” and the “returnees’ remigration” on the diaspora in Latin America. To what degree have ideas of ethnic or political loyalty, of national and cultural identity been shifting one way or the other due to the increased proximity to their ancestors’ place of origin and the influx of material and immaterial goods from Japan? And how have narratives on the experience of hostile or discriminatory treatment by the Japanese impacted on the collective image of the Nikkei in Latin America? The Nikkei experience of living abroad bears the potential for rethinking the meaning of diaspora. As the Nikkeis’ return home migration, to the land of their ancestors, has not fulfilled the postulated ‘negation of a diaspora’ (Clifford, 1994), it has squared the sensation of being diasporic in the sense of being displaced twice and having multiple relationships with distinct nations which are neither just homeland nor hostland. Based on multi-sited fieldwork in Japan, Argentina, Bolivia, and Paraguay, I argue that the Nikkei are entangled in a squared diaspora in which the juxtaposition of homeland and hostland itself becomes questionable, instable and fluctuating