Current studies analysing gendered representations of athletes in the media focus primarily on Anglophone or European countries. This paper attempts to expand this scope by adding female athletes and media in Asia to the small body of work in English-language research. It does so by focusing on gendered depictions of athletes in Japanese media during the largest sporting event in the world: the Olympic Games.
Although media in Japan are still heavily influenced by hegemonic discourses of what is considered feminine and masculine, the consistent success of several Japanese athletes in sports ranging from track and field to volleyball has already challenged the ideal of the Japanese woman as a physically “fragile” homemaker in the past. Coverage during the 2012 London Olympics and 2016 Rio Olympics, heavily influenced by the success of individual athletes, shows continuity in this regard. Gendered aspects are often superseded. This is evidenced, for example, by the significant amount of media attention that Japanese female wrestlers received during both of these Olympic editions, outperforming male wrestlers by a large margin. Also, in qualitative terms, female athletes are still distinctly differentiated from male athletes, with their success indirectly attributed to external factors such as male guidance. The depiction of female athletes in Japanese media is congruent with the marginalisation that female athletes face in European and Anglophone media, as has been explored in existing literature. However, this article argues that it is incorrect to assume that women are considerably marginalised in “masculine” sports in Japan, as they frequently are in cases outside of Japan. Significantly, the consistent success of Japanese female wrestlers in the Olympic Games has overshadowed the results of their male colleagues. This problematises the notion that female athletes are mostly gaining ground in more “attractive” sports, and that they are marginalised when they deviate from what is perceived as appropriately feminine by participating in sports requiring “masculine” physical capital such as muscularity, arguably viewed as “distasteful and inhumane.”
Starting with a short overview of media, gender, and the Olympics in existing research, this article shows how sports coverage in European and Anglophone media mainly focuses on male athletes. Although women athletes are gaining ground in coverage in certain aspects, such as quantitatively in photographic coverage, these are still frequently limited to more “attractive” sports, with sexualisation as a recurring theme resulting in a consistent underrepresentation of women. The paper continues by describing how female athletes faced consistent marginalisation when modern sports were introduced in Japan in the late nineteenth century and developed throughout the early twentieth century. This is followed by an exploration of how women and sport in Japan have developed, using examples of athletes who have defined and redefined female athleticism in Japan throughout the twentieth century and early twenty-first century. It becomes clear through these examples that female athletes have been able to push the boundaries of what is considered “appropriate” for women in Japan through sports.
The following section deals with gendered depictions in media in Japan during the London Olympic Games in 2012. Exploring an existing Japanese study on television coverage of the Games, this section shows how women athletes in Japan are also gaining ground in media from a quantitative perspective. This is similar to earlier studies of European and Anglophone media. However, the article also shows that women are still described as more emotional, showing a clear differentiation in descriptions of female and male athletes. Subsequently, this article continues with a study of gendered depictions of athletes in Japanese print media during the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, showing that female athletes are gaining ground in terms of increased photographic coverage, especially in the case of wrestling. This is interesting, as wrestling requires muscularity, a physical attribute mostly framed as masculine. The article then concludes with its main findings, describing how certain aspects of gendered depictions of female athletes in Japanese media are congruent with existing cases covering European and Anglophone media. However, as the article also concludes, it is problematic to assume that Japanese women athletes are sidelined in sports that are deemed masculine, as a more in-depth exploration of Olympic wrestling coverage in Japanese print media shows.