More Than Medals: A History of the Paralympics and Disability Sports in Postwar Japan by Dennis J. Frost

Abstract

Reviewed by: More Than Medals: A History of the Paralympics and Disability Sports in Postwar Japan by Dennis J. Frost Wolfram Manzenreiter More Than Medals: A History of the Paralympics and Disability Sports in Postwar Japan. By Dennis J. Frost. Cornell University Press, 2021. 336 pages. ISBN: 9781501753084 (hardcover; also available as e-book). Not much has been known about the history of Japanese disability sports until recently, neither among the general public in Japan nor among specialists in the field of disability sports studies. English-language material on this subject matter has been close to nonexistent, and the few scholarly surveys of Japanese sports in general, including my own book Sport and Body Politics in Japan (New York: Routledge, 2014), are tellingly silent on sports in the service of medical rehabilitation or social inclusion of people with physical impairments. The situation is somewhat better in regard to Japanese-language sources, though even there the gap between academic discourse and general knowledge proved large enough to prompt the organizers of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Summer Games to dedicate considerable attention and resources to raising public awareness in the long buildup toward the occasion. For an international audience particularly in the domains of Japanese contemporary history and disability sports studies, Dennis J. Frost has meanwhile produced a fine and accessible historical account that draws on the results of a decade of largely archival work. More Than Medals: A History of the Paralympics and Disability Sports in Postwar Japan covers a period of roughly sixty years between Japan's first international sports event for the disabled, held on the occasion of the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, and the most recent edition of the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Summer Games held in 2021. These events are discussed in depth in the first and last of five chapters, respectively. The three chapters in between retell the history of other seminal sports events that have arguably slipped from memory among the largely Euro-American group of Paralympic historians: the Far East and South Pacific Games for the Disabled (FESPIC), a multisport and multidisability competition held from 1975 to 2006; the Oita International Wheelchair Marathon, staged annually in the city of Ōita (capital of the prefecture of the same name) since 1981; and the 1998 Winter Paralympics in Nagano. Frost's analysis clearly reveals not only the long-standing engagement of Japanese activists in the promotion of [End Page 378] disability sports at both domestic and international levels, but also the social constructedness of disability and its changing perception through the decades. As the first chapter, "Tokyo's Other Games," reminds its readership, disability sports in Japan as elsewhere had their roots in medical therapy and rehabilitation exercises. European experiences with the effectiveness of sports in the treatment of war veterans provided the background for the establishment of the first international competition for disabled athletes, the Stoke Mandeville Games, and inspired medical doctors in Japan to promote their own vision of sports in the service of disability rehabilitation training. In marked contrast to the explicit focus of the Stoke Mandeville Games on athletes suffering from severe spinal injuries, Japanese pioneers and, ultimately, the organizers of the 1964 Tokyo Paralympics pursued a more inclusive approach. These "other games" combined the established tradition of the Stoke Mandeville Games with two additional days of competition by multidisabled athletes gathered from all of Japan as well as invited from Europe. Private-sector sponsorship secured the additional funds needed to carry out the historically unprecedented task of putting together an international multidisciplinary and multidisability sporting event. Frost records major donations from the Lions Club as well as the Japanese Automobile Manufacturing Association and Japanese Bicycle Promotion Institute, though I think it should have been mentioned here or elsewhere in the study that the latter two organizations, which in part oversee government-sponsored gambling, are required by their constitutions to transfer part of their income to the promotion of sports and welfare-related projects. Frost's account particularly honors the manifold contributions of Nakamura Yutaka, a medical doctor based in Ōita Prefecture, to disability sports and the Paralympics. Nakamura was one of a small number of individuals and representatives...