Coaching pedagogy and athlete autonomy with Japanese university rowers

Abstract

It has been suggested by some authors that, given the relationship between dependence and vulnerability to exploitation, a shift in coaching away from surveillance and control and towards autonomy-supportive behaviours by coaches will be conducive to athlete welfare. This paper utilizes an ethnographic approach, underpinned by the theoretical position of the later writings of Foucault, to understand the autonomous practices of athletes in a Japanese university rowing club. Of particular interest are the ways in which the relative absence of the coach contributes to athlete autonomy. The long-term sport-education of these Japanese university rowers results in an enduring subjectification that no longer requires the intervention of any coach. At the same time, these Japanese rowers still actively and autonomously engage in practices of the self, expressed in non-strategic, interactional ways.

Keywords:

• Japan
• rowing
• Foucault
• bukatsudo
• civic education

Acknowledgments

The authors must thank both the editor and the group of reviewers for their long and concerted efforts to move this paper from its initial draft into something that was worthy of final publication. Their suggestions for improvements were extensive, wise and generous

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Over 65% of Japanese high-school students are involved in sports club activities at their school, and over 50% of Japanese university students are involved in sports club activities (Blackwood and Friedman 2015).

2 This is not to say that coaches don’t exist in Japanese educational sport. Their presence and influence are certainly more prominent in high school sports. Miller’s (2013) extensive analysis of corporal punishment in Japanese school sports indicates the considerable influence on athlete behavior by coaches, however the model at a tertiary level is far more autonomous and less punitive.

3 As with many sports in Japan there are some companies that have rowing teams (McDonald 2005). There are some rowers who graduate and gain employment at a company in part because of their rowing ability. The company sports model expects however that members complete a full day of work as well as training and competing for the company.

4 The context and setting for the original ethnographic study by McDonald is reported in his doctoral thesis (2005, 82–85, 129–132).

5 Much of the data used in this paper is from a published doctoral thesis of nearly fifteen years ago by McDonald (2005). However over the almost fifteen years since data collection, very little change was apparent in the way the club operated. McDonald continues to visit the site up to this day. The stories examined in this paper remain apparent in the contemporary context of this, and other nearby, rowing clubs. Rather than homogenizing coaching practices in Japan we are utilizing this club model to demonstrate potential alternative models of coaching that produce opportunities for athlete autonomy.

6 Suisen allows students to join a university without having to satisfy the requirements of the entrance examinations (McDonald 2005). In this way, suisen students are similar to athletes who receive a scholarship in Western contexts.

7 Denison and Mills (2014, 5) suggest the theoretical possibility of having ‘the athletes administer training’ as a way of both coaches and athletes reversing the common control that coaches have over athletes’ bodies and performances. Our viewpoint is that the BURC has achieved this possibility.

8 Whilst such silent conformity by players in the face of disappointment, physical punishment, occupational uncertainty and verbal abuse, imposed by the coach, trainer or more experienced players, has been observed in other sport settings such as soccer (Manley et al. 2016, 226), the silence of Japanese rowers is part of a lifelong training in the observation of hierarchies.

9 Spielvogel (2002, 201) notes a similar thing within the staff duties of cleaning in a Japanese fitness club where new staff members ‘soon learned… the all-important skill of pacing one’s own clean-up speed to exactly match that of other staff’.

10 It would be simplistic to suggest that the club rower’s were dominated, where relations of power ‘find themselves firmly set and congealed’ (Foucault 1988, 3). First, McDonald has hosted a number of visits by club rowers to Melbourne, Australia. On these visits, and away from the context of the University Rowing Club, club members quickly lose their seishin habitus (McDonald and Hallinan 2005), and act differently within a different field of possibilities. Nakamura (2005) suggests a similar ‘loss’ in the Major League Baseballer, Suzuki Ichiro. Second, even whilst in the BURC, rowers expressed resistant actions, such as refusing normalized drinking (McDonald 2005, 200954; McDonald and Sylvester 2014).