Sports, Gender and Shōwa Nostalgia in the NHK Narratives of ...

Social Science Japan Journal Vol. 16, No. 2, pp 235–250 2013Advance Access publication June 18, 2013

doi:10.1093/ssjj/jyt015

© The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press in conjunction with the University of Tokyo. All rights reserved.

Remembering the Oriental Witches: Sports, Gender and Shōwa Nostalgia in the NHK Narratives of the Tokyo OlympicsIwona MERKLEJN*

The phrase Oriental Witches (Tōyō no Majo) was used in the mass media to describe the Japanese women’s volleyball team that won 22 games in a row during their tour of Europe in 1961; they became even more famous when their impressive career was crowned with a gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics in 1964. In this paper, I investigate media representations of the Oriental Witches in the retrospective programming of the NHK Japanese public broadcaster. I analyze the Oriental Witches success story as a part of ‘Shōwa nostalgia’—a cultural trend idealizing Japan of the 1950s and 1960, especially the years of high economic growth that led up to the Tokyo Olympics. I argue that NHK actively promoted ‘Shōwa nostalgia’ in the first two decades of the new Heisei era, and the Oriental Witches were a prominent feature of this programming. The NHK representations of the Olympic team, although seemingly non-gendered, provide normative notions of gender roles that ‘proper’ Japanese women should conform to in the idealized Shōwa era.

Keywords: Oriental Witches; Tokyo Olympics; NHK; Shōwa nostalgia; women’s volleyball

The term ‘Oriental Witches’ (Tōyō no Majo) was used in the Japanese media1 to describe a Japanese women’s volleyball team that won 22 games in a row during their tour of Eastern Europe in 1961 (Daimatsu 1963: 22). At the World Championships in Moscow in 1962, they beat the Soviet team on their own ground, ending eleven years of Soviet dominance in volleyball. The Japanese team were hailed as ‘national heroines’ (Gordon 2009: 264) when their impressive career was crowned with a

Iwona Merklejn is an International Research Fellow with the Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies of the University of Tokyo. Her research interests include modern history of Japan, Polish–Japanese relations, and media studies. She is currently working on a book about the Oriental Witches, based on Japanese and Eastern European resources. She can be reached at [email protected].

*I would like to thank the following mentors and colleagues who helped me in different stages of writing this paper: Professors Hirashima Kenji, Suehiro Akira and Dr. Itō Miho of the Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo; Professors Mizukoshi Shin, Yoshimi Shun’ya, Jason Karlin and Mr. Iino Yōichi of the Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies, University of Tokyo; Mr. Abe Yasuhiko of NHK Archives; Professor Okada Tomoyuki of the Faculty of Informatics, Kansai University, Professor Maeda Hiroko of the National Institute of Fitness and Sports, and my friend Felicity Nanashima.

1 Reports about the ‘Oriental Witches’ (Tōyō no Majo, Tōyō no mahōzukai) or ‘Oriental typhoon’ (Tōyō no taifū) started to appear in Japanese newspapers in 1961 when the team had a successful tour in Europe (‘Nichibō Kaizuka renshō’. Asahi Shinbun, 19 September 1961: 11; ‘‘Tōyō no taifū’ Nichibō chiimu’. Yomiuri Shinbun, 5 October 1961: 6; ‘Muteki! ‘Tōyō no taifū’’. Mainichi Shinbun, 17 October 1961: 5; evening edition). The Japanese journalists claimed to borrow the phrase from a Soviet newspaper (or newspapers), but none of the Japanese sources provided a specific reference. According to the memoirs of the team’s coach, Daimatsu Hirobumi, it was ‘a local newspaper in Leningrad’ that had used the ‘Oriental Witches’ nickname for the first time (Daimatsu 1963: 187). My search of Russian sources revealed that ‘Komsomolskaya Pravda’ (a youth edition of ‘Pravda’) and ‘Nedela’ (a weekly supplement to ‘Izvestia’) published extensive (and full of praise) features on the Japanese team when they won the world championships in Moscow in 1962 (‘Tainoe oruzhe chempionok’. Nedela, 21 October 1962: 22; ‘Avtografy chempionok’. Komsomolskaya Pravda, 26 October 1962: 4). The Russian word ‘charodeika’ which can be translated as ‘witch’ or ‘fairy’ was used in ‘Nedela’.

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gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics (1964). At the Tokyo Games, volleyball was for the first time rec-ognized as an Olympic discipline. The women’s volleyball finals (carefully staged on October 23, the last day before the closing ceremony) achieved record audience ratings in Japan (85%; NHK 2001: 554), marking a peak for sports while entering history as a media event. The Oriental Witches and their coach, Daimatsu Hirobumi, became iconic figures of the Shōwa era (1926–1989).2

In this essay, I investigate the Oriental Witches success story as a part of ‘Shōwa nostalgia’—a cultural trend idealizing Japan of the 1950s and 1960, especially the years of high economic growth that led up to the Tokyo Olympics (Abe and Wood 2011; Brinckmann 2008). The trend became conspicuous in various media outlets as the reign of the Shōwa emperor came to an end and the new era (Heisei, 1989–) marked by economic instability and anxiety began, and has recurred repeatedly ever since. As is often the case, dissatisfaction with the present provoked nostalgic feelings towards the imagined past (Handler and Linnekin 1984; Robertson 1991 quoted in: Goldstein-Gidoni 2012: 119). In these media discourses, the mid-Shōwa years appear as idyllic times when Japanese families lived in harmony, people trusted one another and though life was austere, hard work was rewarded. The periodization of ‘Shōwa nostalgia’ is highly selective and subjective—controversial memories of war and the occupation, as well as social and environmental costs of high economic growth are kept out of the picture. ‘Shōwa nostalgia’ has been expressed in a variety of forms: political ideolo-gies and themes of new mega events such as the Nagano Olympics in 1998 where the captain of the Oriental Witches team, Kasai Masae (Nakamura)3 carried the Olympic torch (Abe and Wood 2011: 3249; Tagsold 2013: 49), and in relentless efforts of politicians of the ‘Olympic generation’ such as Ishihara Shintarō (1932–) to host the summer Olympics in Tokyo again (the unsuccessful bid for the 2016 Games and the current one for 2020).4 Classic examples of this trend in popular culture include the series of films Always: Sanchōme no yūhi (Always: Sunset on Third Street, directed by Yamazaki Takashi, 2005)5 that tells the story of a friendly neighborhood in Tokyo where a girl arrives to start working in a small car repair shop and is treated as a member of the owner’s family. Japanese public television, the NHK, has promoted ‘Shōwa nostalgia’ in many ways. One popular example is ‘Project X’ (2000–2005)—a documentary series celebrating courageous men of postwar Japan who introduced innovations in various fields (with women playing supporting roles, mostly cleaning and cooking in the background).

I argue that the Oriental Witches are an important and understudied part of ‘Shōwa nostalgia’ imagery and propose to look at them through the lens of NHK TV retrospective programs broadcast in the late Shōwa and early Heisei era when the Japanese media exploited nostalgic feelings with particular intensity. As the ‘glory days’ of the Oriental Witches had also been the ‘glory days’ for the Japanese public broadcaster, the team received a considerable amount of coverage in the NHK retrospective programming (Tagsold 2013: 43). Several important anniversaries, such as the 50th anniversary of TV broadcasting in Japan or the 60th anniversary of the end of the World War II, as

2 See for instance ‘Shōwa onna shi’. Asahi Shinbun. 5 January 1989, ‘Kagayaku stā kara mijikana aidoru e. Shōwa no taishū bunka’. Asahi Shinbun. 9 January 1989: 13.

3 All the core members of the Oriental Witches’ team got married after the Tokyo Olympics and changed their names. In this text, I use their original names and add the marital names in brackets for reference when every member of the team is first mentioned.

4 On the ‘Olympic generation’, see Tagsold 2013. On Ishihara’s agency in the Tokyo bid, see Kelly 2010.

5 Based on the long running manga (Saigan Ryōhei, Shōgakukan, 1974–, 60 volumes as of 2013) and animation series Sanchōme no yūhi (TBS, 1990–1991). At the point of this writing, the feature film has had two sequels: Always: zoku Sanchōme no yūhi, 2007 and Always: Sanchōme no yūhi ‘64, 2012.

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well as the millennial countdown became an opportunity to look back at the postwar part of Shōwa. Moreover, the beginning of the new era in Japan more or less coincided with the period between 1988 and 2008, marked by the Seoul Olympics and the Beijing Olympics. New Olympic events, especially ones taking place in neighboring countries, inspired both Japanese media and academia to look back at the first Games in Asia.6

I study the Oriental Witches as celebrities, heroines and gender role models, as they have been cast as such in the media narratives of the Olympic success. I argue that NHK representations of the famous team, although seemingly non-gendered, in fact provide normative notions of gender roles with which ‘proper’ Japanese women were supposed to conform in the idealized Shōwa era. According to Robin Kietlinski, who studied the history of women and sports in Japan and East Asia, ‘The Olympic Games (…) have the potential to have a lasting effect on how notions of femininity and/or womanhood are conceived within a given society’ (Kietlinski 2011b: 176). The scene of the Oriental Witches’ final victory over the Soviet Union has been exploited by mass media as a symbol of empowerment of Japanese women, both on a national and on a gender level. A deeper insight into the discourses surrounding this ‘moment of glory’, however, reveals a conservative gender agenda that renders this empowerment rather illusionary.

In Japan, some research on the ‘golden’ women’s volleyball team of the Tokyo Olympics has been done in the field of sports sociology. One chapter in the volume on Olympic studies edited by Shimizu (2004) is devoted to the Oriental Witches (Arata 2004b). The author analyses their story in the framework of historical sociology, focusing on their beginnings as a company team. His emphasis is not so much on the media event but on the social context of industrial sport in Japan, which devel-oped from recreation to high-level competition (see also Arata 2004a).

In English, the most exhaustive study of the Oriental Witches is a chapter in Igarashi’s book (2000: 155–163) that investigates the narratives of war as a part of Japanese postwar cultural history. Igarashi focuses on the team’s coach, Daimatsu Hirobumi, his war memories and his philosophy of life as explained in his books. Otomo (2007) refers to the Oriental Witches at length in her study of body narratives and the 1964 Olympics, based on a literary critique of print media texts. Elyssa Faison (2007:151–161) discusses the famous volleyball team as an example of transwar continuity of gendered management practices in the Japanese textile industry. Orlansky-Kietlinski highlights the legendary team in her article (Orlansky 2007) and her book (Kietlinski 2011a) on the history of women and sports in Japan. Tagsold (2013: 42–51) analyzes the Oriental Witches as a ‘site of memory’, with a focus on symbolic meanings of their famous technique called ‘rolling receive’.

6 There is an abundance of research on Tokyo Olympics in Japanese (fifty-six titles in the National Diet Library resources and ‘countless academic journal articles’; Kietlinski 2011a: 162). Each of the authors discusses some specific aspect of it, such as life in the Olympic Village etc. In the Orinpikku sutadiizu volume, edited by Shimizu (2004), four chapters focus on the Tokyo Olympics, discussing a variety of topics, from the images of Tokyo in foreign films to the city’s sewage sys-tem. The volume on the socio-economical significance of the Olympics edited by Oikawa (2009) also deals with diverse and particular themes, from the music written for the event to the housing conditions in Tokyo at the time. In English, ‘The International Journal of the History of Sports’ has recently published three special issues on the Olympics in Asia where the Tokyo Olympics are widely discussed (vol. 24, issue 8, 2007, vol. 28, issue 16, 2011, vol. 29, issue 9, 2012). The unsuccessful Tokyo Olympic bid for the 2016 Games also attracted attention to its historical background. Sandra Collins (2008) elaborates in her book on so called ‘missing Olympics’ which were to be held in Tokyo in 1940, but got canceled due to the Japanese military engagement in China. Droubie (2011b) and Tagsold (2009) discuss the political circumstances of the 1964 Tokyo Games. Kelly (2009, 2010) and Kietlinski (2013) study the links between the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and Tokyo’s bid to host the Games in 2016. In an edited volume by Tsutsui and Baskett (2011), several authors discuss the Tokyo Olympics as the first Games to be held in Asia. The majority of chapters in the volume about sports memory in Japan, edited by Niehaus and Tagsold (2013) is devoted to the Tokyo Olympics.

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Taking into account the existing body of research, I hope to contribute in two ways. First, contra Kietlinski (2011a: 1–2), I will suggest that we not too hastily interpret the history of sports achieve-ments of Japanese women, outstanding as they may be, as a process that necessarily helps overcome gender stereotypes or advance the social position of women in general. The history of the Oriental Witches team proves that in 20th century Japan, sports functioned as an effective way of controlling women and keeping them away from other activities in the public sphere. What makes the picture more complicated is the fact that clearly delineated gender roles can diminish men as well as women, and that reality is also exposed in some aspects of the Oriental Witches success story.

Secondly, I hope to highlight nostalgic media discourses of the Oriental Witches’ success story that have not received sufficient attention thus far. Although my approach is text based and historical, I have investigated the narrative as it has been told by national television, the most powerful medium in 20th century Japan. I study TV programs as text, taking into account the polysemy of the audio-visual material. I refer to other sources (newspapers, magazines, memoirs) for critical contextualiza-tion of TV stories and to find out whether and how the narrative told by public television differs from that permeating other media.7

Most of the NHK programs featuring the Oriental Witches are clearly targeted at the ‘Olympic generation’ (Tagsold 2013: 43). The Tokyo Olympics volleyball finals are always presented as an epoch-making event and numerous quotations from correspondence with viewers (in most cases conducted by ordinary mail) prove it has remained in their memory as such. In the ‘end of millen-nium’ New Year’s special in 1999, viewers voted the final game number 12 out of the 100 most important news events of the 20th century (the 100 events were divided into categories such as politics, society etc. Anata ga erabu sekai no 20seiki, 30 December 1999, 20:15:32). Parts of the programs in question are ‘recycled’ from previous documentaries, and from the (very scarce) material recorded at the time of the actual event.8 The theme seems to be a popular choice for Christmas and New Year’s Eve programming, which can be categorized as family television. The memories of the Oriental Witches are evoked when the next Olympics are about to begin (1988, 1992, 1996 etc.) or around dates such as the 60th anniversary of the war’s end (Nihon ga waita ano toki, 2 January 2005), the 50th anniversary of the first Japanese TV broadcast (Anata to tomo ni 50nen, 1 February 2003), and the anniversary of the Tokyo Olympics itself (Intaraku TV kuizu, 10 October 2003).9

Television genres investigated here are mostly documentaries and talk shows covering the Olympics, volleyball or sports in general, postwar history, and the high-growth era. One show is a quiz about the Tokyo Olympics in which the Oriental Witches ask and answer questions about them-selves (Intaraku TV kuizu, 10 October 2003). I also decided to include in my analysis an exclusive interview with Isobe Sata (Maruyama), the youngest of the ‘core members’ of the Oriental Witches (Okāsan no benkyōshitsu, 1 September 1988). Isobe was interviewed on the occasion of the Seoul

7 I rely on print media for contextualization because commercial television networks in Japan do not keep open archives. Some of the popular programs from the past are available to the public in the Broadcasting Library in Yokohama. While I found a few references to the Oriental Witches in commercial programs, the available material was too fragmentary to create a basis for comparison with the NHK Archives resources that are more extensive and systematically organized.

8 On 2 January 2013 NHK rebroadcast a full coverage of the final game for the fist time since the Tokyo Olympics. The material was retrieved from a private video recorded back in 1964. According to the NHK, at the time of the Games vide-otape was a scarce resource and most of it was reused to record new programs. ‘“Tōyō no Majo” kesshō hōsō. Tōkyō Gorin irai hajimete. NHK, shichōsha kara eizō’. Nihon Keizai Shinbun. 24 November 2012: 30.

9 In the NHK Archives database, I found 30 programs that mentioned the keywords: Oriental Witches (Tōyō no Majo). 12 of those referred to the topic at length and I focused on their contents. At the time I conducted my research (2011), NHK Archives database provided systematic information only for the programs broadcast from 1990 on. For details, see the list of programs in the end.

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Olympics because her son entered the national representation in swimming. The interview differs from the television genres mentioned above, but is for the most part retrospective and very instru-mental in grasping the meanings of the Oriental Witches success story.

In the NHK programs, the Oriental Witches are presented in a variety of roles as athletes, working girls, national heroines and mothers. In the following pages, I will investigate these images and rep-resentations in detail, and show how they fit into the predominant media discourses of gender within the framework of the ‘Shōwa nostalgia’. It is worth examining how gender stereotypes contribute to nostalgic mythology, and how they express longings for the ‘good old times’ inevitably lost. Let us see how the roles of women and men are negotiated in the Oriental Witches narrative.

1. Athletes, working girlsThe Oriental Witches’ final victory over the Soviet Union in the Tokyo Olympics (the ‘gold medal point’ moment of the game) is replayed in almost all of the programs. In the interview with one of the players—Isobe Sata (Maruyama)—the interviewer asks her how many times she has seen the scene. Isobe says that even though she never makes a point of looking for it, she has seen it replayed innumerable times on TV, especially this year (1988) with the Seoul Olympics approaching (Okāsan no benkyōshitsu, 1 September 1988, 00:01:46).10 In the extended version, we can see the women playing in court, the coach sitting quiet and composed on the bench, and Princess Michiko (the cur-rent empress) in the audience clapping her hands (Doyō tokushū, 8 June 1996, 00:07:50). Princess Michiko is another icon of the ‘Shōwa nostalgia’, as her wedding in 1959 became a media event to be remembered. But this scene can be also interpreted as symbolic in class terms: factory workers are running and sweating, entertaining the royalty.

And in fact, the national ‘golden’ team was originally a company team. The core members were girls who worked for Nichibō (Nihon Bōseki) textile factory in Kaizuka near Osaka. From the early 1950s, the management made consistent, systematic efforts to bring the most promising young play-ers to the Kaizuka factory and create a team that could win national and international tournaments (Arata 2004a, Faison 2007: 153–156). However, unlike in the Soviet ‘amateur’ sports system, where the athletes were notionally employed while in fact they trained full time, the Japanese girls worked like everybody else and trained after hours. This was proudly stressed both by coach Daimatsu and by the management. The players were supposed to set an example of hard work for other employees who cheered for them (Arata 2004a: 143).

In 1958 the girls from Kaizuka won Japan’s four major volleyball titles, making the company officials ‘ecstatic’ (Faison 2007: 154). In 1961 the team went on a tour of Europe and played a series of matches in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania and the Soviet Union. As previously mentioned, the Japanese players impressed international audiences by winning 22 games in a row (Daimatsu 1963: 22). Even in a very short interview that Kasai Masae (Nakamura) gave to a Polish sports newspaper, ‘Przegląd Sportowy’ (‘Sports Review’) while visiting Warsaw, she pointed out that though they represented the whole Japanese nation, their ‘base’ was Nichibō (‘Przegląd Sportowy’, 2 October 1961: 2). The loyalty to the company was always there. Kasai also gave an interesting insight into their company-centered lifestyle in her memoirs. As a married woman later in life, she lived with

10 As the NHK Archives database is still in the process of compilation, I was provided with a detailed scenario (kōseihyō) for some of the programs, but not all. In case of the programs where kōseihyō was available, I refer to its numbering of cuts and sequences when quoting the contents. When kōseihyō is not available, I refer to the numbers appearing on the screen.

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her in-laws—a fate dreaded by many young women in Japan (and elsewhere). Not so Kasai. On the contrary, she was happy because it was a refreshing change to have a real family after 13 years in the factory dormitory (Kasai 1992: 94).

The Oriental Witches narrative is very symbolic of their era if we realize that the whole structure of Japanese society at the time was organized around the company (kigyō shakai; for more analysis of the Oriental Witches as a company-based sports team, see Arata 2004a; Faison 2007: 151–161). Girls like them entered the workforce very young and were trained by their company. They were separated from their families, lived in dormitories and went home only twice a year—for the New Year and Obon (the Buddhist festival to worship the dead in mid-August; Otomo 2007: 121). These young women were not treated as independent adults, but as immature creatures to be disciplined, guided and protected. Work at the factory was a stage on the way to marriage, typically arranged by their parents or other elders. The management controlled their private lives to a great extent under the pretext of protection of their chastity (Faison 2007).

In the program featuring the beginnings of the Oriental Witches team (Dokyumento. Supōtsu tairiku, 21 May 2005), the narrative takes us back in the past, to the Kaizuka factory where the whole story began. We are told that in the 1950s, there was a ‘boom’ in the textile industry and ‘most workers in those factories were young women’ (Dokyumento. Supōtsu tairiku, 21 May 2005, 00:03:21). There is no explanation why. (History tells us that young women were cheap labor with few options.) Instead, the narrator informs us that the companies often set up volleyball courts to attract young workers, provide recreation for them, and ‘entertain’ them, as well as to ‘keep up their enthusiasm for work’ (Dokyumento. Supōtsu tairiku, 21 May 2005, 00:03:56). Daimatsu mentioned in his memoirs that Nichibō had founded a volleyball team for ‘company PR’ (Daimatsu 1963: 25). He felt the team’s achievements ‘elevated the name of the company, contributed to the Japanese vol-leyball world and enabled Japan to stand proud in the world’ (Daimatsu 1963: 26).

In several programs (for instance Anata ga erabu sekai no 20seiki, 30 December 1999, 20:20:52) we can see compilations of short films (black and white, from the Nichibō resources) presenting the daily routine of the heroines. They worked from 9 am to 3 pm, then trained from 4 pm till 1am or so, 8–10 hours per day on average, then slept for 5–6 hours. When asked by a journalist whether it was not too hard, Matsumura (Kanda) Yoshiko says it was ‘OK’ because they were young (Anata ga erabu sekai no 20seiki, 30 December 1999, 20:22:33). They seem to have identified themselves with their company very strongly. In several programs (for instance Nihonjin no ai shita uta, 24 December 1999), the Oriental Witches sing the favorite song of their youth—‘Shusse kaidō’ (The road into the wide world) by Hatakeyama Midori. They replaced the original lyrics with their own. Their new lyrics included words: ‘Our enemy is the Soviet Union, here we stand as Nichibō’ (Teki wa Soren da, kochira wa Nichibō;Nihonjin no ai shita uta, 24 December 1999, 21:37:00). The positioning here is not even Japan vs. the Soviet Union—it is their company vs. the Soviet Union. The anti-communist ideology expressed in this song was convenient both to the management and to the state, which sought to deter workers from any left-wing political activity.

Given this background, one of the most mediagenic themes of the Oriental Witches narrative seems to be a Japanese-style variation of the Cinderella story. Ordinary girls, textile factory workers, achieved success due to their hard work, endurance and perfect teamwork. Work hard for the com-pany and the nation, be obedient and loyal, and you can be as successful as them—this was the hope-ful message behind the Oriental Witches narrative. It certainly served to improve the workers’ morale and discourage labor agitation among young women in factories. The heroines did not become rich but did become famous and were relatively successful later in life. But for every outstanding athlete the company could point to with pride, there were thousands of young women with no prospect of

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promotion, no matter how hard they worked. It is now universally acknowledged that cheap female labor played a major role in the economic growth of modern Japan. Abundant research on female laborers in textile (and other) factories in Japan proves that for the most of the 20th century, they worked long hours, earned little, and were subject to harsh discipline and indoctrination (Brinton 1993, Faison 2007, Gordon 2009; for an alternative interpretation, see: Arata 2004a, b). But the NHK retrospective narratives are invariably consistent with paternalistic corporate gender discourses, promoted by the Japanese management for the most part of the Shōwa era.

2. National heroines, celebrities, anti-celebrities?The core members of the team who became the focus of media attention were: Kasai Masae (the team leader), Miyamoto Emiko (Terayama), Tanida Kinuko (Itokawa), Handa (Nakajima) Yuriko, Matsumura Yoshiko and Isobe Sata.11 Given the amount of media coverage they received, the Oriental Witches belong in the world of celebrities (Orlansky 2007: 80). They have also been hailed as ‘national heroines’ (Gordon 2009: 264). Uchihashi Katsuto, one of the commentators on the ‘The News of the Century’ New Year’s special, says the 20th century was ‘a time of longing for heroes’ (Anata ga erabu sekai no 20seiki, 30 December 1999, 19:29:05).

A classic study by Boorstin (1992) explains that the ‘longing for heroes’ has always been intrinsic to the human condition, but changed in the 20th century due to media developments. The ancient ‘hero’ mutated into a media-created ‘celebrity.’ In a differentiation that still frames many debates today, Boorstin says that ‘The hero was distingiushed by his achievement; the celebrity by his image or trademark. The hero created himself; the celebrity is created by the media. The hero is a big man; the celebrity is a big name.’ (Boorstin 1992: 61).

In the case of athletes, the boundaries between these categories might be particularly blurry: their achievements seem more real, but their media exposure brings them closer to the world of show business. According to Dennis Frost, who studied several sports celebrities of modern Japan, ‘Because of the seemingly quantified and achievement-based nature of sports celebrity, athletes are sometimes portrayed as more ‘real’ or ‘authentic’ than other types of celebrities. Closer examination, however, reveals that the celebrity status of sports stars is produced and consumed in the forms of various representations, or what film scholar Richard Dyer calls ‘star images’’ (Frost 2010: 6). These images, just like in the case of film stars, are ‘extensive, multimedia, intertextual’ (Dyer 1986: 3, quoted in: Frost 2010: 7). In the end, Frost uses the terms: ‘sports celebrity’, ‘sports star’ and ‘sports hero’ interchangeably (Frost 2010: 239). In my view, the Oriental Witches can be discussed both as ‘national heroines’ in a sense proposed by Boorstin and as ‘celebrities’ typical of the 20th century media. Either way, the gender discourses of their representations in nostalgic programming are worth exploring.

The way the Oriental Witches are portrayed in NHK programs is extremely respectful. For instance, everybody stands up when the team enters the studio (Intaraku TV kuizu, 10 October 2003, 00:58:58). The Olympic march is played while they enter (Anata ga erabu sekai no 20seiki, 30 December 1999, 20:17:45、 Intaraku TV kuizu, 10 October 2003, 00:57:37). When journalists introduce them, they mention the skill each one is most proud of (tokui waza; Anata ga erabu sekai no 20seiki, 30 December 1999, 20:17:45). There is no commentary on their physical attractiveness, not even polite compliments—neither now nor in reference to their younger days. This is an interesting exception to established

11 When the team appears in the media, they are always introduced in this order, from the oldest to the youngest.

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patterns. Firstly, studies conducted about the same time as these programs were produced prove that the media in general pays a lot of attention to looks when featuring female athletes (for media portrayals of female athletes, see: Hirakawa 2002, Ishida 2002) and secondly, in the same programs there is a lot of talk about beauty when recalling foreign (Caucasian) sportswomen (in recollections of the Tokyo Olympics, Czech gymnast Czaslavska is often mentioned for her attractive looks; see for instance Intaraku TV kuizu, 10 October 2003, 00:00:43). In his study of gender and racial images in the contemporary Japanese media coverage of the 1964 Games, Paul Droubie observed a pattern in which Japanese and Caucasian female athletes were commented on as beautiful while other Asians and African women were not (Droubie 2011a: 83). The Japanese volleyball team, however, was sin-gled out of this regularity because ‘the training the women underwent, and the discourse surround-ing it, rendered them almost asexual creatures.’ (Droubie 2011a: 86). However, ‘asexual’ does not necessarily mean ‘non-gendered’ as I hope to demonstrate later. But in the NHK narratives, national heroines are praised for their skills and moral qualities (endurance, hard work), not for their beauty.

Although in the NHK programs featuring the Oriental Witches there is no discussion of their looks, in a few there are, however, references to size. In the interview with Isobe Sata (Okāsan no benkyōshitsu, 1 September 1988), her interlocutor comments that she is taller than him when asking her to sit. In any nation, volleyball players are much taller than average, as in this sport height is a major advantage. Japanese volleyball players stood out both among women (on average smaller than men) and among their countrymen (on average smaller than Caucasians). At the time of the Tokyo Olympics the Japanese players, although taller than other women in their country and generation, were still not as tall as Russians or other Europeans. According to Daimatsu’s memoirs, the average height of a Japanese team member was 170 cm while for the Soviet team, the average was 177 cm (Daimatsu 1963: 99). Kasai Masae says that after their victory over the Soviet Union in 1962, every-body suspected that ‘the little Japanese players did some magic tricks’ (chippoke na Nihonjin senshu ga mahō o kaketa; Anata ga erabu sekai no 20seiki, 30 December 1999, 20:19:36) and hence their nickname Oriental Witches was born. As Daimatsu notes in his memoirs, the meaning of the Russian word ‘charodeika’ used to describe the Japanese players (‘Tainoe oruzhe chempionok’. Nedela. 21 October 1962: 22) translated as a ‘witch’ (majo) does not necessarily carry the connotations of a mean old hag; it can also denote a benevolent fairy. What puts an old witch and a benevolent fairy in the same category is their supernatural power (Daimatsu 1963: 184–188).

In ‘The News of the Century’ special, one of the guests in the studio, manga artist Matsumoto Reiji, says that the final victory in the Olympics was a moment that ‘beautifully blew away’ the Japanese inferiority complex about body size relative to Western people (Anata ga erabu sekai no 20seiki, 30 December 1999, 20:30:25). Miyamoto Emiko admits that when she first saw the cap-tain of the Soviet team in Moscow in 1962, she thought the Soviet player was a man, as she was so big (Dokyumento. Supōtsu tairiku, 21 May 2005, 00:14:47). In the NHK portrayal of the Oriental Witches, the emphasis appears to be on the contrast between the Japanese team and the foreign teams (especially the Soviet team), not on the contrast between the volleyball players and national average. The final message is the Oriental Witches still appear petite (hence, feminine) when com-pared with huge, masculinized women in the Soviet team.

On TV and elsewhere, Kasai Masae as the team leader often speaks for the whole group. She is the most ‘glamorous’ of them all (see for instance Hirō banzai! Eikō no kage ni chishō ari, 5 August 1991, 10:04:56, Kasai visiting the national team training for Barcelona Olympics). Of all the Oriental Witches, the team leader is the closest to a typical ‘celebrity’. Her memoirs reveal a person who is conscious of the tension between her public image and private life, and controls it carefully (Kasai 1992). Her choice to put off her marriage plans until after the Olympics (she was 29 in 1962 when

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she made that choice, and had no fiancé) became a topic of national debate (Dokyumento. Supōtsu tairiku, 21 May 2005, 00:23’05-). Her decision was vital because of the authority she had over other players who were also planning to retire from volleyball after the World Championships in 1962. In an interview given much later, Kasai nonchalantly said there was no big difference between get-ting married at 29 or 31 (Dokyumento. Supōtsu tairiku, 21 May 2005, 00:24:12). In an era when a single woman older than 25 was supposed to be an old maid, this was quite a brave statement. It seems Kasai made an individual, independent choice mostly motivated by her passion for volleyball. However, some of the other players admitted they had felt enormous pressure because if they lost in the Olympics, they ‘would not be able to live in Japan anymore’ (Dokyumento. Supōtsu tairiku, 21 May 2005, interview with Matsumura Yoshiko, 00:33:12). In their case, the decision to go on train-ing for two more years was another sacrifice for the nation.

One Oriental Witch who seems to resist celebrity status is Tanida Kinuko. In two of the programs produced as New Year’s Eve specials, there is a short message from her. Tanida politely refuses to come to the studio because she has to tend to her business in Yamaguchi. She runs a soba restaurant, so for her the end of the year is the busiest time. ‘The News of the Century’ special shows her stand-ing in front of her establishment in casual clothes, saying hello to her teammates (Anata ga erabu sekai no 20seiki, 30 December 1999, 20:19:04). The general message is very simple: ‘I am sorry, but I cannot appear on TV because I have work to do’. One is tempted to call Tanida an ‘anti-celebrity’ as she clearly could not care less about media attention. The same applies to Isobe Sata, who appears in most programs, but wears little makeup and dresses very simply. Being molded by a consumerist culture of late modernity obsessed with body image, I was at first inclined to describe their attitudes as subversive. However, on a closer examination I came to a conclusion that this was not the case. Both Tanida and Isobe fulfill the gender roles prescribed for women of their generation: frugal, effi-cient housewives devoted to their families, and not too absorbed in their looks or self-image (on the social construction of a ‘housewife’ in 20th century Japan and campaigns promoting frugality among women see: Garon 1997: 127–134, Gordon 2005; on the recent nostalgic discourses about ‘real housewives’ of ‘good old’ Japan, see Goldstein-Gidoni 2012: 119–127). Although Tanida Kinuko demonstrates her independence as a businesswoman, she engages in an enterprise that still fits in the frame of ‘proper’ feminine behavior (running a restaurant—cooking).

3. MothersAmong the programs about the Oriental Witches, I found two directly referring to their ‘post-Olym-pic’ lives as wives and mothers. The first one is a short (25 minutes) interview with Isobe (Maruyama) Sata.12 I will analyze it in more detail because it is very informative in reference to gender roles in Japan of the ‘quintessential’ Shōwa era.

Isobe is a mother of four children, but the whole interview is structured around her relationship with her eldest son Shigemori, who has just qualified as Japan’s representative in swimming for the Seoul Olympics (1988). According to her, he started swimming as a child not to become a sports champion, but to improve his general health and strength. She was surprised when he wrote in a school essay that he wanted to become an Olympic champion, but did not think much of it, as many children say that when they get interested in sports. Isobe says that at the beginning of his swimming

12 Okāsan no benkyōshitsu. Kosodate talk. Maruyama Sata (Mother’s classroom. Conversations about childrearing. Maruyama Sata), 1 September 1989.

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career, Shigemori was not happy about the fact that he had a famous mother. But according to the interviewer, later on he mentioned watching his mother’s Olympic achievements and being inspired by them. Contrary to everyone’s expectations, she did not offer Shigemori advice because they both understood that swimming and volleyball were different disciplines. Once he got into training, she just encouraged him to practice continuously (00:05:44).

Isobe gives some answers contrary to the expectations of the interviewer. For instance, she cheer-fully rejects the suggestion that raising four children must be very hard. She says the elder ones helped to look after the younger, she forgot the hard times quickly and in general, would recom-mend the whole experience to a friend. She has always been an optimist (00:04:10). According to her, cooking for four children is not so different from cooking for one. The announcer politely insists that ‘there is a difference of magnitude’ (00:23:29).

As the title suggests, this program is targeted at mothers and supposed to provide guidance or even a role model for them. The announcer presents Isobe as a successful woman who three years after the Olympics started ‘her next big job’ (00:03:17) as a mother. On the other hand, she is presented as an ordinary, down-to-earth woman looking after her family. The announcer emphasizes an image of her ‘quietly’ (00:06:49) serving her son breakfast before he goes to practice. She says she cared about his health not as ‘a golden medal mother’ (00:08:46), but as ‘just a mother’ (tada no okāsan 00:08:47). She is a kind of mother that any modest, hard-working housewife of the 20th century Japan could identify with.

The interviewer asks about the konjō (willpower) concept that was a keyword (makura kotoba 00:19:08) of her youth. Isobe explains it is about relying on your own strength (00:19:46) and over-coming your limits (00:20:00). She stresses the necessity of one’s own efforts and does not like the idea of children depending too much on overprotective parents. She also says she did not expect her children to be at the top of the class, it was ‘OK’ if they were just average and she thinks there is more to life than just studying: sports is also a form of learning (00:20:46). She also says it is important to make friends through membership in sports clubs (00: 20:56).

If any of the ‘education-obsessed mothers’ (kyōiku mamma) in 1980s Japan watched this inter-view, they must have been surprised about how relaxed this mother of four children was. Probably, her purpose in life was not to raise an Olympic champion because she was an Olympic champion her-self. She could have been confident and relaxed because her fulfillment in life did not come through the success of her children but through her own. She joked freely about the fact that she did not even know when the Seoul Olympics were supposed to start and her children were ‘appalled’ by her ignorance.

But what is most striking in this program is the total absence of the father of the family. The announcer asks Isobe: ‘How many years after the Olympics was Shigemori born?’ (00:03:07) with-out asking whether she got married, to whom, or when. Mr. Maruyama is not mentioned even once. We do not get to find out what his job is or whether he is interested in sports. The program seems to follow the pattern of a family centered around the mother and child relationship rather than the husband and wife relationship. That family model was considered typical of Japan in the high-growth era as fathers were literally absent from home most of the time. The mothers were supposed to deal with childrearing and run the household on their own while their husbands worked long hours to provide for their families (Goldstein-Gidoni discusses ‘the Japanese corporate gender contract’, and its recent changes in 2012: 81–112; on the social consequences of such a model, as well as on the ideologies of motherhood in contemporary Japan, see Yoda 2006). One can only guess this was also the case with the Maruyama family. But without knowing this social and cultural background, one might even gather from the program that Isobe was a single mother.

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This conspicuous absence of husbands or life-partners prevails also in other retrospective programs featuring Japanese female athletes. While in the case of male athletes, a supportive wife or fiancée is sometimes mentioned (for instance, the marathon runner Kimihara Kenji and his wife. See Doyō tokushū, 8 June 1996, 00:42:01), in the case of female volleyball players one gets the impression that men simply do not exist in their lives while they pursue their sporting careers. The only man constantly present in the Oriental Witches success story is their father-like, charismatic coach (more on his role in the next section). In the retrospective programs about the Oriental Witches and their ‘golden times’, there is a general assumption that marriage should happen at some point in every woman’s life, but potential and actual marriage partners are never mentioned. The only thing we get to know about them, eventually, are their surnames—the traces of supposed male dominance.

What we do know is that the Oriental Witches did not quit their favorite sport altogether when they started their families. The interview with Isobe reveals that she returned to playing volleyball as a hobby, after a mere five years’ break, and got involved in ‘mothers’ volleyball’ (mama san barē). As for the other members, their engagement in ‘mothers’ volleyball’ was mentioned in a live cover-age of the 33rd ‘mothers’ volleyball league’ finals in 2002 (Dai 33kai zenkoku mama san barēbōru taikai, 2002.080.18) but only in the context of historical background. The event was organized by the Homemakers’ Volleyball National League (Zenkoku Katei Fujin Barēbōru Remmei), which claimed to involve more players than Koshien (the high school baseball championships, a major sports event in Japan; Dai 33kai zenkoku mama san barēbōru taikai, 19 August 2002; 10:06:50). The program informs us that not only Isobe, but also the other Oriental Witches were active in the ‘mothers’ volleyball league’ that took off in 1970. It is structured to show the tournament as a happy event celebrating sports, but also family, motherhood and local communities. This program, as well as the interview with Isobe Sata, depicts the position of women as mothers in Japanese families as central. Devotion to maternity is expected, but it is also respected as an important job. There seems to be a general understanding that women need to pursue some kind of activity outside the home, but they are encouraged to engage in a hobby (sports are seen as such) rather than in a full-time job (Goldstein-Gidoni 2012: 76; on Japanese housewives and their activities see also Imamura 1987).

4. Daimatsu: coach, national hero, father-figureThe only man constantly present in the Oriental Witches narrative is their coach Daimatsu Hirobumi (1921–1978), respectfully called sensei (a teacher, a master). All the programs I investigated referred to the special relationship between Daimatsu and his team. His premature death added to the nostal-gia surrounding him as a national hero.

The part 2 of a documentary produced in 2005 to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the end of the war (Dokyumento. Supōtsu tairiku, 21 May 2005) is the most elaborate and detailed account of the Oriental Witches success story and their ties (kizuna) with their coach. It begins with the scene at the cemetery in Kamakura, showing the team gathering at Daimatsu’s grave on the 27th anni-versary of his death. On the grave, there is a ball made of stone with the engraving of his favorite keyword, konjō (willpower). Then we see the documentary scenes of Daimatsu’s training sessions, with a commentary:

‘Just trust and follow me without question! They believed in the words of their coach, called ‘Daimatsu the Demon’ and endured his harsh training.’ (00:01’48).

The training scenes are followed by two short interviews with the players, Miyamoto Yuriko and Kasai Masae. Miyamoto recalls telling Daimatsu she could not do a rolling receive and his anger at

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her refusal (00:01:57). Kasai was also at first reluctant to perform a rolling receive, but she finally discovered she could do it if she tried (00:02:04). Then come the scenes of the final victory in the Olympics, the team lifting up the coach and the short interview with Daimatsu praising the players. Next, a picture of the team and the coach appears and the narration follows:

‘Coach Daimatsu and the Oriental Witches united their minds and reached the top of the world. Their achievement became a symbol of the high-growth era when everyone lived with foolhardy pas-sion.’ (00:02:56)

Next, we see more training sessions and learn about the controversies concerning Daimatsu and his methods. There are more interviews with the players telling their stories. Handa Yuriko says Daimatsu applied the rule of collective responsibility (rentai sekinin 00:06:34). He would make them run around the grounds for 2, 3 and even 4 hours if they had done something wrong. Matsumura Yoshiko tells how he got angry when they seemed not to understand him and left, but would stay in his office working until late at night. Then they would go apologize to him and resume training (00:07:26). The one who was most severely scolded was apparently Tanida Kinuko. She once ran away from practice and called him names (after Daimatsu had poured a bucket of cold water on her; 00:08:10, 00:08:22).

Other factory workers came to watch the training out of curiosity and were astonished to see how hard it was. Apparently, there was some criticism from the labor union saying that Daimatsu was taking it too far (00:08:58). But according to Matsumura Yoshiko, he brushed criticism off, as he believed strongly in what he was doing (00:09:17). The union’s objections did not seem to matter, neither to the coach nor to the company authorities. According to Orlansky, ‘Daimatsu’s winning team reflected the gendered hierarchy of Japanese society in the early 1960s. (…) Just as male super-visors supervised female production line workers in the textile factory, Daimatsu had the ultimate authority over the women’s volleyball team’ (Orlansky 2007: 80).

Some sources of the military-style training methods that Daimatsu applied are easy to trace, and appear in the program. He was in the army and survived the traumatic experience of the Imphal cam-paign—one of the most disastrous Japanese military initiatives during World War Two (00:10:27). However, you do not necessarily have to be in the army to do the sort of exercises he demanded of his team. His harsh training sessions would look familiar to anybody, male or female, who has been to a contemporary Japanese martial arts club. The famous ‘rolling receive’ (kaiten receive) is strikingly similar to a safe falling technique (ukemi) that every aspiring martial arts practitioner must learn at the beginning. To someone familiar with Japanese martial arts such as judo and aikido, it seems like Daimatsu did not invent anything new—he just applied basic martial arts techniques to volleyball.13 Of course, it must have been extremely hard for the players training on the floor, not on tatami mats, in shorts and T-shirts, not judo outfits. They recall that they suffered a lot of injuries and their skin was ‘all scratched’ (kizu darake; Anata ga erabu sekai no 20seiki, 30 December 1999, 20:21:56) as a result of the training.

Judging from the NHK programs as well as other sources, the Oriental Witches seem to hold no grudge against the coach who subjected them to a training regime based on military drill. On the contrary, they cry when talking about his premature death and wish he had lived longer (Nihonjin no ai shita uta, 24 December 1999, 00:17:10). In their memories, he usually appears as a strict but loving father. In her interview, Matsumura Yoshiko says that she never really known her father as he died in the war, so for her, Daimatsu might have been a kind of father surrogate. According to her,

13. In his book, Daimatsu denies direct inspiration. However, he admits that he was familiar with the judo technique and in the process of training, the rolling receive naturally began to resemble the ukemi (Daimatsu 1963: 48–49).

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the same might have been true for Tanida Kinuko and Isobe Sata, who also lost their fathers early (Dokyumento. Supōtsu tairiku, 21 May 2005, 00:29:06). In the media narratives, Daimatsu became ‘the ideal father that, as a nation, Japan needed, particularly after the head of state lost his political power and spiritual charisma’ (Otomo 2007: 122). As Daimatsu was a war survivor, he could be perceived as a ‘father who came back from the war’ when many others did not (Igarashi 2000: 161).

Incidentally, Matsumura admits she sometimes saw him as a father, sometimes as the boyfriend of her dreams (Dokyumento. Supōtsu tairiku, 2005.05.21, 00:29:06). Miyamoto Emiko says she wished she could marry someone like him (Dokyumento. Supōtsu tairiku, 21 May 2005, 00:29:28). This is the only moment in all the programs when the fact that Daimatsu was an attractive man (tall) is admitted. Miyamoto implicitly confirms that the girls’ admiration for their coach might not exactly conform to the father-and-daughter pattern. In a text published in a weekly magazine many years later, Kasai Masae confessed: (‘Coach Daimatsu was everything to us: father, an elder brother and boyfriend’ (Daimatsu kantoku wa chichi, ani, koibito deshita; Kasai 2010). One could not blame them if they had been all in love with him—he was attractive and they were young women who simply had no time to see other men. But for the most part, in the NHK programs Daimatsu is portrayed as an asexual figure, just like the rest of the team. His family is mentioned only briefly and the emphasis is always on his leadership skills, never on his good looks. In spite of the visual character of the medium, celebration of the victory of the spirit over the reluctant body prevails in the television narratives as well as in the written ones.

5. ConclusionIn the NHK narratives, the Oriental Witches appear as happy dwellers of ‘good old Japan’ of the Shōwa era. They are cast in a variety of roles, following an ‘ideal’ life course designed for women of their generation: working girls, athletes, housewives and mothers. The women of the team represent moral and social values such as hard work, endurance, teamwork and obedience to authority. They bear all the hardships and recollect them with a smile. They are more than celebrities of the past era—they are remembered as national heroines. NHK’s portrayal of the Oriental Witches is pure, conservative, moral and extremely respectful. It is also very static—there is little difference between the way the heroines were portrayed in 1988 and 2008.

At first glance, the television images of the ‘golden team’ stand out as remarkably non-gendered. As mentioned before, the heroines are praised for their skills and athletic performance, not for their beauty. Every appearance of the ‘golden’ volleyball team on national television is merit-based. References to their sexuality and physical attractiveness are close to nil. This portrayal stands in a stark contrast with the common, worldwide mass media practice of expressing more interest in a famous woman’s private life than in her views or achievements (Byerly 2012: 12). It might also explain the relative lack of image-consciousness among the heroines and their relaxed, ‘anti-celeb-rity’ manner.

A closer look at the portrayal of the Oriental Witches in these retrospective programs reveals, how-ever, that their media representations are far from gender neutrality. If we take into account social and cultural contexts, we find out that even relatively recent images uphold the gender discourses predominant in Japan of the Shōwa era. Lack of ‘glamorous’ look is consistent with the virtues of fru-gality and modesty that were expected from Japanese housewives of the ‘Olympic generation’. The symbolic absence of any men other than the coach in the television narratives reinforces conservative, moralistic gender stereotypes. If social construction of gender is about controlling sexuality, then the

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media images of young Oriental Witches provide very good examples of it. The team is portrayed as a harmonious family, obedient to the father. Even if the members occasionally rebel against their coach or doubt his ideas, in the end he is always right. If criticism appears, it is ultimately dismissed. The NHK productions enhance the ‘Shōwa nostalgia’ and celebrate ‘traditional’ Japanese family symbol-ized by Daimatsu Hirobumi and the Oriental Witches.

FundingJapan Society for the Promotion of Science (PE10066) that sponsored my fellowship at the Institute of Social Science, the University of Tokyo (2010–2011), and the institutional cooperation of the Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies, the University of Tokyo (2011–2012). The search of the Japanese television archives was possible thanks to the NHK Archives Gakujutsu Riyō Trial Kenkyū Program [third edition, 2011].

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Tsutsui, William M and Michael Baskett (ed.). 2011. The East Asian Olympiads, 1934–2008: Building Bodies and Nations in Japan, Korea, and China. Global Oriental.

Yoda, Tomiko. 2006. ‘The Rise and Fall of Maternal Society: Gender, Labor, and Capital in Contemporary Japan’. In Japan after Japan: Social and Cultural Life from the Recessionary 1990s to the Present, ed. Yoda, Tomiko and Harry Harootunian. Durham, London: Duke University Press.

NHK TV PROGRAMS

1) Okāsan no benkyōshitsu. Kosodate tōku. Maruyama Sata, 1988.09.01. NHK Archives ID: 100 1988.09.01-10116

2) Hirō banzai! Eikō no kage ni chishō ari. Nihon joshi barē monogatari, 1991.08.05. NHK Archives ID: 100 1991.08.05-10094

3) Doyō tokushū. Kindai Orinpikku 100nen. Ano kandō o mō ichido, 1996.06.08. NHK Archives ID: 100 1996.06.08-10136

4) Nihonjin no ai shita uta. 5tsu no tēma de eranda 100nen 100kyoku, 1999.12.24. NHK Archives ID: 100 1999.06.05-10140

5) Anata ga erabu sekai no 20seiki. 10 dainyūsu. Dai ichibu: kon’ya happyō anata ga eranda 20seiki, 1999.12.30. NHK Archives ID: 100 1999.12.30-10162.

6) Dai 33kai zenkoku mama san barēbōru taikai. Sōri daijinhai ketteisen, 2002.080.18. NHK Archives ID: 100 2002.08.19-00139

7) Anata to tomo ni 50nen. Kyō wa terebi no tanjōbi, 2003.02.01. NHK Archives ID: 100 2003.11.11-00404

8) Intaraku TV kuizu. Ano hi sono toki. 10gatsu 10ka. Tōkyō Orinpikku spesharu, 2003.10.10. NHK Archives ID: 100 2003.09.27-00170

9) NHK spesharu. Terebi wa Orinpikku o dō kaete kita no ka, 2004.03.22. NHK Archives ID: 100 2004.03.23-00080

10) Nihon ga waita ano toki. Spōtsu sengo 60nen. Zenpan, 2005.01.02. NHK Archives ID: 100 2004.12.13-00128

11) Dokyumento. Supōtsu tairiku. Nihon ga waita ano toki. Spōtsu sengo 60nen (2). Tōyō no Majo. Oni no Daimatsu. Kōto no kizuna, 2005.05.21. NHK Archives ID: 100 2005.05.22-00115.

12) Premiamu 10. Zasetsu to eikō. Sekai o kaeta asuriitotachi, 2008.02.29. NHK Archives ID: 100 2010.06.22-00141

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Sports, Gender and Shōwa Nostalgia in the NHK Narratives of ...

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