From Popular Entertainment To Political Tool:On The Evolution Of The Nature Of Football In Modern Japan

Although Newspapers played an important role in promoting the popularization of sports in modern Japan,the nature of sports in Japan from Meiji to the early Showa period has been viewed from a "top-down" perspective through official documents.Newspapers should be used to view the nature of sport from a "bottom-up" perspective.This paper uses historical materials from newspapers and periodicals and tries to show the various faces of sports from the end of the Meiji period to the early Showa period before the Sino-Japanese War.Sport serves not only the political side,but also the commercial interests of newspapers and the recreational needs of the public.Even when the national powers realized that sports needed to serve political and military purposes,they also experienced complex power struggles.At the end of the Meiji period,football,unlike gymnastics,was not regarded as a national sport when it was introduced.Although football in Meiji period with the color of serving for the "civilization" ideology,but at this time football is mainly a kind of independent development of sports.During the Taisho period,with the development of urbanization and industrialization,Japanese people turned to watching sports events organized by newspapers as a form of entertainment.In addition,the reason people watch sports at this time also includes the expectation of elite education.The newspaper company also cooperated with the railway company while actively focusing on the entertainment needs of the people.The tripartite cooperation between the newspaper,the campus and the railway company reflected the trend of commercialization of sports at that time.Domestically,the commercialization of sports and the expansion of its influence provided the premise for the later intervention of state forces.The establishment of Meiji Jingu competition Conference means the concrete state intervention in sports,but the process by which national powers have taken notice of sport and used it as a political tool has not been smooth,there have also been power struggles in the use of sport as a political tool.The Meiji Jingu competition promotes the worship of the emperor through the presence of the royal family and the gathering of the public,arousing the public’s national consciousness and emotion.In addition to trying to use sports as a political tool at home,the Japanese government also wanted to use sports as a tool to invade East Asia.By attaching importance to football,Japan tried to take advantage of East Asian sports organizations as an important link in the construction of "New order in East Asia" after becoming the sports hegemon in the in the 9th Far Eastern Championship Games.