著者

鈴木 楓太

出版者

一般社団法人 日本体育学会

雑誌

体育学研究 (ISSN:04846710)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.65, pp.253-272, 2020

被引用文献数

1

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This paper clarifies some of the representations of female athletes at the dawn of women's sports in Japan through an analysis of contemporary discourses regarding Kinue Hitomi, the first Japanese female Olympian. Previous studies have focused on Hitomi's image as a deviator from the normative female image, differing from the representation of other "sports girls" associated with the image of ryosaikenbo ("good wife, wise mother"). However, the present paper focuses on Hitomi's representation as the embodiment of the normative female image. What can be read from the aspect of "femininity" in the context of Hitomi, who was not included in the image of ryosaikenbo?<br> The "prone episode" at the 1928 Summer Olympic Games is an anecdote that allegedly represents her "femininity": Shortly after the runners finished in the women's 800 meters, only Hitomi fell prone modestly while the other foreign runners lay on their back. This paper focuses on the episode and explores the significance given to it.<br> Hitomi was represented positively as embodying mainly 2 types of female image: the healthy robust woman and the feminine graceful woman. The first image contrasted with the traditional one of the Japanese woman as a small, weak individual and was considered symbolic of the nationalism associated with Japanese modernization. <br> When people viewed Hitomi in terms of the second image, they were clearly opposed to the concept that she was masculine, thus differing from the image of other "sports girls" who were casually associated with the ryosaikenbo concept in terms of their daily lives and careers.<br> Hitomi's achievement at the 1928 Summer Olympics had been widely admired for enhancing the national prestige of Japan. However, although her physique was praised at the time, its perceived meaning saw a transition from the "strong body" as a metaphor of modern Japan to the lady-like image represented by the prone episode. Through this process, multiple meanings assigned at first was transformed into a simple anecdote to illustrate that Japanese women are superior to Western women in terms of their "femininity". It is ironic that Hitomi, whose gender had always been questioned because of her eminent athletic talent, came to be regarded as a typical Japanese "feminine" woman as a result of the prone episode, which had completely no relation to the arena of sport. Furthermore, after the war, as this contradiction between the feminine and the athletic physique faded, the prone episode turned into a casual representation of "femininity", like the earlier representation of "sports girls".