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March 2, 2011

[SSJ: 6551] DIJ Study Group, 9 March:The Early Asian Games and Predecessors

From: DIJ
Date: 2011/03/02

You are invited to our upcoming History and Humanities Study Group on Wednesday, 9 March 2011, 6.30pm at the German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ) Tokyo (for directions please see http://www.dijtokyo.org).

Our presenter will be Stefan HUEBNER (Jacobs University Bremen/DIJ), and the title of his talk will be

The Early Asian Games and Predecessors (1913-1978):
Sport and Media Orchestration Between Transnational Experience and Representations of the Nation

The Asian Games are the second largest international sports event in the world, only overtrumped by the Olympic Games. With almost a century of history, their origins can be found in the Far Eastern Championship Games, which were established by American YMCA-members in 1913 and lasted until 1934. After the Second World War the Games were re-founded as the Asian Games and have steadily grown in size since they were first held in New Delhi in 1951.

From the beginning, Olympic and amateur sports values
like fair play, sports manship, team play and keeping sports and politics separated were encouraged so as to bring different Asian countries together in a peaceful atmosphere and to spread friendship or at least mutual respect between them. Traditiona l sports ideologies, however, sometimes complicated the adaption of these " Western" values. The political situation in Asia, including European and Am erican late colonialism, the Japanese expansion and later the Cold War, also strongly influenced the pan-Asian dimension of the Games.

At the same time, the Games were part of the nation building and "moderniza tion" projects of individual Asian societies, ultimately helping to promote a national identity and to gain international prestige. They served to symb olically represent the host country in various ways, for example by staging a "glorious past" or a "splendid future" via ceremonies, architecture, c ulture programs and winning athletes.

My presentation therefore focuses on the following questions:
Did Asian athletes and officials act according to the Olympic and amateur sports values? Did their behaviour (in and outside of the stadium) depend on the nationality of the athletes they had to deal with? Which Asian nations were willing or allowed to participate and at which point of time?
What kind of identity - national identity of the host country vs. pan-Asian identity - was dominant in the symbolic staging and at which point of time? Were the Games instrumentalized to support certain political ideologies?


Stefan Huebner studied Medieval and Modern History, Political Science, Philosophy and Japanese Studies at Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, the University of Glasgow, the University of Zurich and Doshisha University. Currently, he is a Research Associate and PhD-student at Jacobs University Bremen.

Everybody is welcome, but registration with Kristina Iwata-Weickgenannt
(iwata@dijtokyo.org) would be helpful.

Approved by ssjmod at 02:22 PM