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

• Table of Contents: Chapter 1: Introduction: Why Women's Sport? Why Japan?Chapter 2: Japanese Sportswomen in ContextChapter 3: The Road to Participation in Competitive SportChapter 4: From Calisthenics to Competition: Early Participation in International SportChapter 5: From Antipathy to Applause: The Emergence of Female Powerhouses on the International SceneChapter 6: Progress and Potential: Sportswomen From Tokyo to TodayChapter 7: "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

Robin Kietlinski's earnest but digestible volume puts the attainments of these athletes in the context of the development of Japanese society over the past 150 or so years, explaining how attitudes to sport, and women's proper place in it, were gradually transformed. But it was the stories of the women themselves, trailblazers nearly all, that most held my attention.