Culture of Japan - Sports and Leisure

Sports and Leisure

Main article: Sport in Japan

In the long feudal period governed by the samurai class, some methods that were used to train warriors were developed into well-ordered martial arts, in modern times referred to collectively as koryū. Examples include kenjutsu, kyūdō, sōjutsu, jujutsu, and sumo, all of which were established in the Edo period. After the rapid social change in the Meiji Restoration, some martial arts changed into modern sports, called gendai budō. Judo was developed by Kanō Jigorō, who studied some sects of jujutsu. These sports are still widely practiced in present day Japan and other countries.

Baseball, football, and other popular western sports were imported to Japan in the Meiji period. These sports are commonly practiced in schools, along with traditional martial arts.

Baseball is the most popular sport in Japan. Football is a popular sport in Japan, after J League (Japan Professional Football League) was established in 1991. In addition, there are many semi-professional organizations, which are sponsored by private companies. For example, volleyball, basketball, rugby union, table tennis, and so on. The motorsport of drifting was also invented in Japan.

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Famous quotes containing the words sports and, sports and/or leisure:

    “Sports and gallantries, the stage, the arts, the antics of dancers,
    The exuberant voices of music,
    Have charm for children but lack nobility; it is bitter earnestness
    That makes beauty; the mind
    Knows, grown adult.”
    —Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)

    “It was so hard to pry this door open, and if I mess up I know the people behind me are going to have it that much harder. Because then there’s living proof. They can sit around and say, “See? It doesn’t work.” I don’t want to be their living proof.”
    —Gayle Gardner, U.S. sports reporter. As quoted in Sports Illustrated, p. 87 (June 17, 1991)

    “A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man’s life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars. What are threescore years and ten hurriedly and coarsely lived to moments of divine leisure in which your life is coincident with the life of the universe?”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)