Conquering the World: The ‘Martial’ Power of Japan Goes Global

Abstract

Throughout the twentieth century Japanese martial arts, or budo, in the West grew from a hardly visible practice for Japanese diasporas and a handful of Japanophiles to an integral part of Western culture. Today, when they have been joined by other cultural exports from Japan, and Karate has been recognized as an Olympic sport in the midst of the decline of traditional martial arts and the rise of Mixed Martial Arts culture, the question of what forces produce such powerful ‘waves’ of Japanese cultural expansion becomes relevant again. To answer this question, the article compares the forces behind the spread of three arguably most popular Japanese martial arts – Judo, Kendo, and Karate – in the West, mainly in America and Europe. Here I offer an analysis based on the division of these forces into those which ‘push’ Japanese culture beyond Japan’s borders (pushing forces) and those which stimulate its consumption in Western countries (pulling forces). Based on the results of the comparison, the article argues that there are certain repeating patterns in both types that form a unique mechanism of Japanese ‘martial’ expansion to the West, with the ‘pulling’ forces being just as, if not more, powerful, than the ‘pushing’ forces.