Faster, higher, stronger: Gender and the Olympic Games in twentieth century Japan

In the 1928 Summer Olympics, Hitomi Kinue won the silver medal in the 800-meter run, marking the first time a Japanese woman had medalled internationally. Eight years later, a now famous radio broadcast declaring, Maehata ganbare! ( Stick to it, Maehata! ) was heard across the archipelago as swimmer Maehata Hideko became the first Japanese woman to win an Olympic gold. In the decades to follow, both the successes and the national attention given to women\u27s sports within Japan would continue to blossom, and the trend has kept onto this day. The remarkable support and encouragement received by sportswomen over the past century seems to stand in stark contrast with the image of Japanese society as one in which women are not encouraged to excel, and one in which good wife, wise mother is still the paragon of womanhood. My dissertation explores how and why, over the past century, athletics have stood out as an arena in which excellence by Japanese women is so actively encouraged. The Olympic Games are an ideal stage upon which to examine this phenomenon. The heavily publicized nature of the Olympics makes for a wealth of primary resources through which pivotal moments in the discourse of gender can be examined. Using these resources, I look closely at the history of Japanese women\u27s participation in the Olympics from 1928 to the present. My research is primarily text-based and historical, with Chapters One through Three considering the historical precedents for Japanese women\u27s entry into the Olympics, the early pioneers of women\u27s competitive sports, and the many female athletes whose Olympic success helped redefine women\u27s role in twentieth century Japan. The final chapter is primarily analytical, and synthesizes various theoretical issues raised by these women\u27s stories. Themes explored include modernity, globalization, commercialization, spectacle/performance, and femininity. The objective of combining historical narrative with theoretical analysis is to both complicate the hegemonic image of the feeble Japanese woman, and to highlight an untold chapter in the history of modern Japan