The taming of the witch: Daimatsu Hirobumi and coaching discourses of women's volleyball in Japan

Abstract

In this paper, I examine coaching discourses dominant in mainstream Japanese media representations of women's volleyball – a sport that has been considered a ‘Japanese national art’ (Nihon no oie gei) since the 1964 Tokyo Games, when it was recognized as an Olympic discipline for the first time. The iconic status of Daimatsu Hirobumi (1921–1978), the coach of the legendary ‘Oriental Witches’ (Tōyō no Majo) Japanese women's volleyball team that won a gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics, and his controversial legacy still loom large over contemporary debates about ‘authoritarian’ and ‘scientific’ styles of coaching (Miller, 2011, 2013). Through a discourse analysis of Daimatsu's memoirs and the memoirs of the captain of the Oriental Witches team, Kasai (Nakamura) Masae (1933–2013), as well as NHK TV programmes and magazine and newspaper articles, I demonstrate that Daimatsu epitomized a hegemonic model of masculinity based on symbolic fatherhood which was central to the social values of twentieth-century Japan...