Football, komyuniti and the Japanese ideological soccer apparatus

Abstract

This contribution explores different ideas about community (or komyuniti, the Japanese loan word borrowed from English) and different means of community development in relation to association football in contemporary Japan. We show how football has been used in Japan to cope with the emotional, social and economic challenges of social change in late modernity. Analysing the social usage of football for a very heterogeneous contingent of needs and ends we argue that over the past 15 years different cities and regions in Japan have been unequally prepared to employ the game for their own local affairs and thus have produced varying modes of community support and exhibit different types of football communities. Sociologists have come to de‐emphasize the meaning of place in the information society,1 turning towards belonging, interest or attachment as alternatives opening out the conceptual space within which non‐place forms of community can be analysed.2 Since we are mainly concerned here with the interaction between football clubs and the various actors in their geographical home town or region, our use of the concept of community remains closely tied to an arguably antiquated sense of place.