Background to Modern Sports. Well before the Asia-Pacific War and Allied Occupation, modern sports had become thoroughly entrenched in Japanese society, culture, and education. They served the multiple goals of healthy bodies, recreation, and entertainment, but more so for men than women. Japan was a participant in the early 20th century revival of the Olympic movement, and Tokyo was selected as the host city for the 1940 Games before the outbreak of World War II shattered dreams and made cancellation necessary. In addition to the modern transformation of such traditional sports as sumo and the martial arts, Western style sports acquired avid followings, especially the American sport of baseball. Amateur and intercollegiate baseball, which had been introduced in the late 19th century, had more appeal to the Japanese than British rugby and European soccer, a sport that did not take off in Japan until much later. In the 1920s, baseball stadiums and ballparks were constructed throughout Japan for the pleasure of players and spectators, and games were broadcast almost as soon as radio was introduced to Japan. The first successful Japanese professional league was organized in the 1930s.

In addition, swim and field-and-track meets, tennis tournaments, gymnastics and winter sports became more popular. Golf, though expensive, acquired a following in Japan's business world, but boxing and American style football lured relatively few fans. With limited success, the YMCA fostered Japanese men's amateur basketball and volleyball teams. Sports clubs were founded, and various kinds of sports tournaments and festivals proliferated in Japan. Admission often was free or inexpensive.

Women and Sports Before 1945. Although men were the chief players and main spectators in older and modern professional sporting events in Japan, women were at least among the crowd. Also, physical education for boys and girls had been introduced into elementary education before 1900. As amateurs, some women enjoyed practicing older martial arts considered appropriate for females, such as archery or naginata (long wooden stave with attached blade). They also took up such diverse modern sports as tennis and gymnastics, or engaged in competitive swimming and foot races. Mountain climbing was another favorite. In women's middle schools and junior colleges, students joined basketball and volleyball teams or played lawn and table tennis. It was mainly for exercise and good fun. Physical prowess ran counter to the feminine ideal of good wife/wise mother, especially to the projection of a demure or modest demeanor. Until the kimono was replaced by modern sports clothes, it was difficult for young women to practice sports effectively or to engage in exercises.

Despite these obstacles, one of the most celebrated Japanese athletes at home and abroad, 1925-30, was a woman, Hitomi Kinue, who starred in track and field competition when in high school and trained in a women's college of physical education. At 5' 6”, she was taller and stronger than most Japanese women her age and was once referred to as a giant as well as a wonder. Hitomi, the only woman in the Japanese delegation at the Amsterdam Olympics in 1928, was also the first Japanese woman to medal, winning Silver in the 800 meter race. Widely acclaimed upon her return to Japan, she met an early death in 1931, possibly from pneumonia, after a series of grueling competitions in Europe. In 1932 at Los Angeles, a second Japanese woman, Maehata Hideko, won an Olympic silver medal, this time in breaststroke competition. She followed this with Olympic Gold at the Berlin games in 1936. She was the first, and for a long time, the only Asian woman to win a top prize in international swimming competitions—or any competitions. Such an achievement was difficult since excelling in sports was not widely encouraged for women in Japan. In time of total war, 1937-1945, imported Western sports were frowned upon as pernicious or banned by the military.

Sports Revival in Occupied Japan. From the start of the Occupation, the revival of individual and competitive sports was mutually promoted by the Japanese government and Occupation officials as beneficial to a country turning from war and aggression to peace and culture and also in great need of healthy recreation. An editorial in the Nippon Times, September 25, 1945, declared: “There is something about sports that strikes a harmonious chord in the hearts of athletes everywhere. The spirit of fair play, of active and healthy competition, the full expression of the strong human body—these appeal to the young and vigorous people of all nations and races.” In welcoming the return of traditional and imported sports to Japan and resumption in the near future of international contests, it warned against professionalism to the exclusion of the general populace. Plans should be included “through which not only the good athlete but also every student and every person may be able to join in the uplifting benefits of athletic activities.” Were these noble ideals really meant to include girls and women?

In November 1945, American forces staged a huge rodeo at the Meiji Shrine Stadium, Tokyo, mainly for the entertainment of GIs, but it attracted curious Japanese onlookers. However, baseball, because of its long popularity, was deemed the ideal sport for promoting democracy and fair play. In addition, General William F. Marquat, close to General MacArthur and head of the Economic and Scientific Section, GHQ, was an avid baseball fan and assumed the role of Baseball Commissioner for Japan. Japanese welcomed the quick return of varsity and professional baseball, a sport which had been banned in wartime Japan. Professional teams resumed competition in November 1945. Waseda and Keio Universities, which had played their last game in October 1943, also resumed their intercollegiate rivalry. Occasionally, Japanese teams and GIs played together in friendly games. In 1948, U.S. Army Sergeant Dick Harn, a former pitcher in the Texas League, began coaching the professional Tokyo Giants and predicted that his team “would develop Japan into the second greatest baseball country in the world. . . . They love it, and they love to learn” (Nippon Times, June 25, 1948). The three-week Good Will Tour, October 1949, of the San Francisco Seals, a winning team in the minor Pacific Coast Baseball League, was a top news story. Fans mobbed them upon their arrival in Tokyo, General MacArthur hosted a luncheon at his American Embassy home, and Mrs. MacArthur did the honors of making the first toss at the opening game. Only a honeymoon visit to Japan by veteran Yankees star Joe Dimaggio in 1953 with his new bride, film star Marilyn Monroe, came close. If baseball is a mirror of society, what provision for full participation was made for girls and women? This is a question one might also ask of American wartime and early postwar society when a women's professional league existed briefly to entertain the home front while men were away at war.

In addition to the return of baseball, Japanese morale was greatly lifted by the swimming feats of Hirohashi Hironoshin, a student at Nihon University who was dubbed the Flying Fish. In 1947, he began setting free style records in Japan and appeared everywhere on magazine covers. He broke more records at meets in Los Angeles in 1949 after he and other Japanese athletes were barred from competition at the first postwar Olympics, held in London in 1948. Although woman gold medalist Maehata was still on the scene as an inspiration, memories were dim. No girl or woman athlete was touted as avidly or praised as enthusiastically as the Flying Fish.

Among traditional Japanese sports, sumo remained highly popular, and tournaments resumed. However, beginning in October 1945, Occupation authorities banned Japanese martial arts from schools and public performance for several years, branding them as ultra-nationalistic. Ironically, on a private level, many American soldiers stationed in Japan became fascinated by judo or kendo and began practicing the martial arts on their own or searching out Japanese instructors. In 1949, an American woman employed in the Economic and Scientific Section, Ruth Gardner, who trained with a Japanese male instructor, became the first foreign woman in Japan to earn the second grade judo rank.

Democratizing Sports. For exercise, fun, and relaxation, Japanese girls and women, either in expanded school programs or in outside activities, went on hikes, swam, ran races, played tennis and volleyball, climbed mountains, and rode bicycles. But what about the great game of baseball? A women's professional softball league was born in 1947 and competed several year, but soon players were exploited more for their beauty or costumes than skill. In 1950, women were hired to play fake baseball in the semi-nude for the entertainment of male voyeurs. In August 1948, over 500 athletes, women included, competed in the 32nd All-Japan Track and Field Championship in northern Japan. Prince Takamatsu, the Emperor's brother, was on hand for the opening. In fields muddy from rain, one woman managed to top the Olympic mark in the broad jump. In the spring of 1951, Japanese women delegates performed well in track and field at the First Asian Games, which debuted in New Delhi, India, under the supervision of an Olympic Committee. However, news coverage of their exploits, including photos, was less than for Japanese male athletes. In other sports during the Occupation years, Japanese women became jockeys, bike and boat racers, and even boxers.

When the Occupation ended, amateur and semi-professional women athletes had made modest gains as sports figures. In May 1954, Japanese men and women racked up the most medals at the Second Asian Games at Manila. Japanese women set Asian records in swimming and diving, but by far the most popular star with the fans was nineteen year old record-breaking runner Nambu Atsuko, daughter of a 1932 Olympic gold medalist in hop-skip-and jump. Shortly after, Japan's top woman tennis player and Asian ace, Kamo Sachiko, at age twenty-nine, would become the first Japanese woman to compete at Wimbledon, making it to a hard-fought third round. When the Foreign Minister denied Kamo foreign exchange funds, two British businessmen came to the rescue as sponsors (United Press, in Mainichi Daily News, May 16, 1954). As an interesting footnote, Crown Prince Akihito met his bride-to-be, Shōda Michiko, on a tennis court in the late 1950s, playing the favorite game of young Japanese elites.

Return to the Olympics. Japanese women (men too) did not fare well when newly sovereign Japan returned to the summer Olympic Games in Helsinki, 1952. It would be a long road to achievement and acclaim. One of the problems was lack of stiff competition in Japan. But in 1964, in the Tokyo Olympics, Japanese women placed third in gymnastics. Even more incredible, as the “Witches of the East” (Taiyō no majo), Japanese women won a stunning victory against Russia to capture the gold medal in women's volleyball, a feat as impressive for its time as the great victory of the U.S. men's hockey team against the Soviet Union years later in 1980. This was the first year that women's volleyball was featured at the games. The team leader, Nakamura Masae, born in 1934, was in her teens during the Occupation years, a time when the Ministries of Health and Education began giving more emphasis to women's physical education and women in sports. Much credit for the victory was also due to the harsh discipline exercised by the team's strict male coach. In common with many other Japanese women in sports, Nakamura retired from the arena after marriage but was brought back in 1998 to carry the Olympic flame to the Nagano Winter Olympics.

More glory years for Japanese women athletes lay ahead not only in Olympic games but also in other international events. The first woman to reach the summit of Mt. Everest was Japanese: Tabei Junko in 1975. Born in 1939, she was a schoolgirl during the Occupation years and had climbed her first mountain at age 10 in 1949. In 1977, Higuchi Hisako (Chako), born in October 1945 at the start of the Occupation, became the first and the only Japanese woman to win a LPGA championship and in 2001 was the first Japanese golfer, male or female, to be inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame. Close on her heels, a second Japanese woman superstar golfer, Okamoto Ayako, born in Hiroshima in 1951, won numerous professional tours in Japan in the 1970s and 80s. She then became the top earner on the LPGA circuit in 1987 and entered the hall of fame in 2005. Meantime, Date Kimiko emerged in the 1990s as one of the top ten women's tennis players in the world, rising to fourth place and reaching a Wimbledon semi-final against Steffi Graff. Arimori Yuko would win the marathon silver medal at the 1992 Olympics at Barcelona and the bronze in 1996 at Atlanta. Takahashi Naoko took the gold medal in the same event at the 2000 Olympics at Sydney, a first for Japanese woman. At Nagoya in 1998, Satoya Tae, a freestyle skier, became the first Japanese women's champion in Winter Olympics, winning Gold in moguls.

It was in figure skating that Japanese women reached world wide acclaim. Itō Midori landed the first triple jump in women's figure skating at the World Championships, 1989; next earned the silver medal at the Winter Olympics, Albertsville, 1992 (the gold went to Japanese American Kristi Yamaguchi, also future winner in 2008 of Television's “Dancing with the Stars”); and subsequently won the world professional women's figure skating championship, 1993, at Landover, Maryland. Equally remarkable figure skaters were to follow. At the 2006 Winter Olympics, Turin Italy, Arakawa Shizuka, skilled in spins, spirals, and triple jumps, gave Japan its first Gold Medal in figure skating competition. Ando Miki became the 2007 Women's World Figure Skating Champion, followed by Asada Mao as world champion in 2008.

Legacy. As individuals, Japanese women athletes have garnered considerable fame for themselves and their country. Sports exist, however, not only for champions and professionals but also as an outlet or recreation for ordinary women from youth to middle age and older. In general, girls and women, although nurtured in a more favorable post-World War II and post-occupation atmosphere than in earlier times, have had to struggle for greater recognition as sports figures, for increased funding in collegiate and professional sports, and for participation in a wider range of sports, including Western style wrestling and body building, thus transcending the boundaries identified as appropriate for a woman.