Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2014

Publication Title

Journal of Sport and Social Issues

First Page

432

Last Page

464

DOI

http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0193723513491752

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between popular representations of soccer and the rise of neoliberal discourse celebrating a new individualism in Japan at the turn of the millennium, a time when the country experienced sharp economic decline and consequent economic restructuring. Examining dominant vocabularies and practices present in coaching discourse, on soccer fields, and in media portrayals of Japanese men’s and women’s professional leagues, the author argues that rather than a coincidental, coeval mirroring between two seemingly unrelated realms—sports and economic transformations—these relationships point to the positioning of soccer over the past 20 years in Japan as a site to educate and physically train individualistic sensibilities and perspectives suitable to and reinforcing of a neoliberal labor market and governmental system.

Rights

This is a post-print version of an article originally published in Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 2014, Volume 38, Issue 5.

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The version of record is available at Sage.

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