Olympic Education as an Intergenerational Relation of the Third Degree

Abstract

Olympic Education as an Intergenerational Relation of the Third DegreeThe 30th anniversary meeting of the Japanese Society for the Philosophy of Sport and Physical Education was held in September 2008. It has been over 30 years since this society was established. Nevertheless the tendency and recent trend in sport philosophy in Japan have not been conveyed abroad. The good reason behind this may be the language barrier between English and Japanese. This makes it difficult to spread the activities on sport philosophy in Japan throughout the world. The question arises as to whether sport philosophy in Japan has the same trend and tendency as sport philosophy in Western countries. We would like to report on sport philosophy in Japan, especially on its characteristics and future perspectives, in order to contribute toward the international development in this field. Sport was introduced into Japan from Western countries in the Meiji period when a national isolation policy in the Shogunate Government of the Edo period finished. The Japanese accepted and have been developing it as a means of school physical education. This fact shows why sport philosophy in Japan has its origins not in sport as culture but in sport in physical education at school. The Japanese philosophy of sport society was not founded by philosophers. It was founded and has been administered by experts in teaching sport and physical education. They recognized several reasons why sport philosophy widened its object from school physical education to sport as the cultural and public phenomenon in the 1960s. Competitive sport was recognized with Japan taking the opportunity of staging the Olympic Games in Tokyo in 1964. This happened because the nation was strongly interested in the competitive sport, and in particular in the Olympic Games. The object of sport philosophy came to be taken for the social meaning of this competitive sport. Also, the change of the Japanese mind structure from common consciousness to self-consciousness, which was affected by the understanding of the human being in the Western culture, made sport a certain action of personal meanings. We would like to suggest a future perspective of the sport philosophy in Japan.