著者

高岡 治子

出版者

Japan Society of Physical Education, Health and Sport Sciences

雑誌

体育学研究 (ISSN:04846710)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.55, no.2, pp.525-538, 2010

被引用文献数

1

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Japanese married women only began participating widely in sports after the Tokyo Olympic Games in 1964. It is often said that sports activities by housewives indicated their liberation from isolated domestic life, thereby promoting gender equality. However, close examination of the systemic characteristics of the 'Mothers' Volleyball' movement (based on its ideology, competition rules and the nature of its routine activities) has shown that these activities possess both a recycling structure that releases housewives from their homes temporarily and reflects the participants' 'housewifeliness', thereby reinforcing the separation of roles between the sexes.<br> In order to clarify by whom and for what purpose this recycling structure was created, this paper focuses on the organizing bodies (sponsor organizations, supporting companies and other bodies that organized and ran the national championships, incorporating the systemic characteristics of Mothers' Volleyball), analyzing the reasons for their involvement with the movement and the benefits they derived from it. The results show that the periodic reflection of housewifeliness, which housewives needed in order to continue in their role as housewives, was necessary for the economic and social benefit of all the organizations involved, and that this is why these organizations committed themselves to the movement.<br> Participating in sports freed housewives from the routine of daily home life, and activities such as helping to organize competitions promoted their socialization and changed their image from that of 'isolated housewife' to 'sporting housewife' and further to 'independent housewife'. The recycling structure mentioned earlier can therefore be thought of as being a directional spiral, and the organizing bodies that ran the national championships can be said to be its drivers.<br> This spiral, which helped to reproduce 'housewifeliness', supplied society with good-quality labour for sustaining Japan's rapid economic growth, which was a political issue in the 1970s. The participation of housewives in sports as one of the activities of parent-teacher associations and women's associations can also be said to have contributed to local revitalization, another political topic at that time. Meanwhile, making sports one of their routine, repeated activities made housewives' lives more satisfying, so that Mothers' Volleyball acted as a medium for the formation of a conjugate relationship between housewives and society.<br>