Development of the sporting nation: sport as a strategic area of national policy in Japan

Abstract

This article provides an analysis of the development of sport policy in Japan with a particular focus between 2007 and March 2012. It illustrates the way a necessary political momentum was achieved for the enforcement of a new legislation for sport in Japan. The first part of the article shows the recent but growing governmental and political salience and interests in sport and the second part explains three key landmarks for the passage of the Basic Sport Law. The third part maps out the fragmented administrative structure of sport in Japan. The policy agenda of the government is now around the concept of the development through sport in order to establish a state founded on a strong sporting culture.

Keywords:

• sport policy
• Japan
• legislation
• development through sport
• country-profile

Acknowledgment

I would like to express my special thanks to Professor Barrie Houlihan of Loughborough University for his expert knowledge.

Notes

1. It was initially the Education Rebuilding Council, established in October 2006 and later renamed to the Meeting on Education rebuilding, whereas abandoned by DPJ in November 2009.

2. After the public consultation process, the Evaluation Commission of the Special Budget for the Revival of a Vivid Japan granted the policy significance to each proposed project. The evaluation was given based on the content of the project and the ‘attitudes towards reformation’ and evaluation was given accordingly: ‘A’, positive overall; ‘B’, positive in the project but some issues in attitudes towards reformation; ‘C’, some values in the project but big issue in the attitudes towards reformation; and ‘D’ negative in the content of the project (Evaluation Commission of the Special Budget for the Revival of the Vivid Japan 2010a).

3. These eight parties are: DPJ, LDP, New Komei, the Communist Party of Japan, Social Democratic Party, Your Party, the People's New Party and New Renaissance Party. The Sunrise Party of Japan left the decision to the Supra-party Project Team.

4. The ACHPE and the Youth division of the Council of Lifelong Learning were merged on 6 January 2001 as a consequence of the administrative restructure of the government.

5. The Government Revitalisation Unit was created on 18 September 2009, as soon as the DPJ government was formed, and it was placed under the Cabinet Office and chaired by the Prime Minister. There are four main areas that the Unit works on: to reduce wasteful budget spending and public work projects; to deregulate and undergo institutional reformations; to improve transparency of public administration; and to increase the use of private funding and reformation in public services. The first round of screening in November 2009 was conducted to review all national projects delivered by the general account (the overall saving was about ¥700 million from the 2010 budget requests). The second round was held in April–May 2010 with two stages to scrutinize the 151 programmes of 47 independent administrative institutions and public-interest corporations (recommended to abolish 36 projects and 50 to ‘scale back’ and requested to return of ¥1.8 billion to the treasury), whereas the third round targeted on 18 Special Accounts and 48 projects under those special accounts, as well as those projects that had been recommended to cut budget or greatly reduce budget in the first round, but not being met the recommendations (October 2010). All the Government Revitalisation Unit and the rounds of screening are available:http://www.cao.go.jp/gyouseisasshin/

6. However, due to the termination of the Team ‘Nippon’ Multi-Supports Project, the requested budget for 2011 went down to ¥ 486 million.