Japanese Women and Sport

Robin Kietlinski is Adjunct Assistant Professor of History at the City University of New York - Baruch College, and a visiting research scholar at Columbia University's Weatherhead East Asian Institute. She has also served as Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Fordham University in New York City. She holds a Ph.D. and M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, and a B.A. from the University of Chicago, all in East Asian Languages and Civilizations

• 1: Introduction: Why Women's Sport? Why Japan?2: Japanese Sportswomen in Context3: The Road to Participation in Competitive Sport4: From Calisthenics to Competition: Early Participation in International Sport5: From Antipathy to Applause: The Emergence of Female Powerhouses on the International Scene6: Progress and Potential: Sportswomen From Tokyo to Today7: "Affecting the Lives of All of Us": Analyzing Theoretical Issues of Japanese Women in SportAfterword: What About Women's Baseball and Women's Sumô?TablesBibliography

This book resolves some of the difficulties entailed in researching the history of women’s sports in Japan and provides material for making global comparisons regarding the impact of cultural differences on gender issues in sports...the most significant feature of this book is the time-based analysis of the history of women’s sports in Japan, an Asian country, from a Western cultural perspective...Because of this feature, Japanese readers may experience a sense of discord. It is precisely this feeling, however, that can create the potential for enrichment of historical research on women’s sports in Japan. This cultural difference will provide stimulus to readers who feel a distance between the significance of women’s sports in the history of Asia and Japan and themselves.