Section 5 | Anthropology and Sociology | Session 3B, Panel (continuation)
Panel organiser: Elise Edwards (Butler University)
Wolfram Manzenreiter (University of Vienna)
The public display of club colors has become a standard expression of sport supporters all over the world. Since the early 1990s, replica shirts, face painting and the variegated prop stock of a burgeoning paraphernalia industry also changed the face of international sport encounters. The “ Sea of Red”, that flooded the streets of South Korea, and the unconstrained mass display of the hinomaru, Japan’s contested national flag, remained as two lasting impressions of the 2002 Football World Cup. While the playful adaptation of styles from a transnational supporter culture may be read as an expression of cultural globalization, meaning and function of supporter kits are far from being unitary and straightforward. My discussion of the social meaning of sport uniforms beyond the sporting field in Japan will show that the practice of “habitualized uniformation” is related to a wide array of motivations and norms, including collective dress codes of a special subworld, the claims to authenticity and difference, and the plasticity of loyalties.
Ann Herring (Hōsei University, Tokyo)
On the playing fields and baseball diamonds of old established Japanese university leagues, players' uniforms hardly vary from international norms. By contrast, the costumes and composition of cheering squads (oendan) often differ markedly from their counterparts in some of the overseas areas from which the classic team sports were transplanted. The exuberant lasses familiar to North American academic-sport spectators play limited roles; from Meiji times on, varsity cheerleading in Japan has been primarily a male activity. Typically, university cheerleaders tend to be young men of commanding presence, with trumpet-like voices. At first glance, their garb seems identical to the black Prussian-style student tunics endemic in Japan from the late nineteenth century on, but the cheerleaders' tunics are clearly differentiated by many details distinguishing them as role specific uniforms, and they are both recognized and accepted as such by the public at large. Despite the visual impact of these costumes in Japanese stadiums and universities (where they double as everyday wear for cheerleading cadres), their concrete nature is obscure, for the cheering squads are in fact secret societies made up of hand-picked members for whom reticence is law; even the patterns often are known only to the wearers themselves and to their tailors. This study represents an attempt to describe classic cheerleaders' uniforms and to explore their little-known 'secret' history, with specific reference to the six so-called 'Ivy League' universities.Elise Edwards (Butler University)
Linkages between the military and sport run strong and deep throughout Japan’s modern history. Strengthening young conscripts was one of the main goals of the fledgling science of physical education at the turn of the 19 th century. As was also true in Europe and the U.S., young soldiers introduced to sports in military academies and officers’ clubs represented their country in the earliest modern Olympic Games. The borders between soldier and athlete, and militarism and athletics, were further blurred as baseball uniforms were refitted to look like soldiers’ uniforms in the 1930s, and as athletes in full military garb increasingly performed short exhibition contests before main events. Beyond these more literal connections, athletes in uniforms, both male and female, have often been treated as stand-in soldiers: representing the nation on modern battlegrounds of polished hardwood and green turf, and facing off against foes equally cloaked in their nations’ colors. In this presentation, I will explore the shifting connections (and disconnections) between the military, nationalism, and sports specifically through the performative technology of uniforms in Japan in both the wartime and the postwar periods. In conjunction, I will explore the range of discursive and visual apparatuses that maintain athletes’ positions as quasi-soldiers. Lastly, I will consider the recent “uniforming” and positioning of Japanese national team athletes in relation to Japan’s increasing military presence and participation in the Middle East.