THE “JŪDŌ SUKEBEI” PHENOMENON: WHEN CROSSING THE LINE MERITS MORE THAN SHIDŌ [MINOR INFRINGEMENT] ― SEXUAL HARASSMENT AND INAPPROPRIATE BEHAVIOR IN JŪDŌ COACHES AND INSTRUCTORS

Abstract

The sport of jūdō was intended as an activity “for all”. Since in 1996 a major sex abuse scandal broke out that involved a Dutch top jūdō coach and several female elite athletes, international media have identified many more abuses. To date no scholarly studies exist that have examined the nature, extent, and consequences of these anomalies. We intend in this paper to review and analyze sexual abuses in jūdō. To do so we offer a descriptive jurisprudence overview of relevant court and disciplinary cases, followed by a qualitative-analytical approach looking at the potential factors that prompt jūdō-related bullying and sexual harassment. Sex offenders may be attracted to jūdō because of: 1. the extensive bodily contact during grappling, 2. the easy access to voyeuristic opportunities during contest weigh-ins and showering, 3. Jūdō’s authoritarian and hierarchical structure as basis for ‘grooming’, 4. lack of integration of jūdō’s core moral component in contemporary jūdō coach and instructor education, and 5. its increasing eroticization by elite jūdō athletes posing for nude calendars and media and by specialized pornographic jūdō manga and movies. Cultural conceptions and jurisprudence are factors that affect how people perceive the seriousness and how these offences are dealt with. A survey of 19 cases of abuse in jūdō worldwide shows that cultural conceptions and jurisprudence cause that such cases are handled in a very heterogeneous way by the law and by the jūdō governing bodies. Jūdō clubs and organizations overall suffer from a lack of expertise, intellectual insight, ethical objectivity, and solid procedures of fairness for both victim and accused, in this way often failing in both sufficiently protecting the weak from sex offenders, and in educating and reintegrating past offenders through jūdō activities that do not involve their victim target groups. Jūdō’s moral philosophy implicitly attempts to offer a utilitarian answer as to how the jūdō community should deal with serious offences. These incidents, however, continue to show the limitations of jūdō‘s utopian “prosperity for all” objective. Key words: child abuse, criminals, judo, jurisprudence, legal cases, martial arts, sexual har-assment, sexual offenses.