Cambridge Companion to Modern Japanese Culture
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224 Sepp Linhart
Table 12.1 Daily action rates by kind of activity, average time spent, 2001
a
Males Females
Activity Weekday Saturday Sunday Weekday Saturday Sunday
Conversation/Personal
associations
12.8%
1:50
16.5%
2:25
17.3%
3:03
25.8%
1:37
26.8%
2:11
27.5%
2:16
Exercise and sports 8.9%
1:58
12.2%
3:13
13.5%
3:47
6.8%
1:37
5.7%
1:33
5.7%
2:39
Outings and walks 12.9%
2:11
18.0%
2:
53
24.0%
3:20
14.8%
1:51
18.9%
2:54
23.5%
3:17
Hobbies,
entertainment,
cultural activities
17.3%
2:40
22.7%
3:34
25.4%
3:58
16.8%
2:19
20.2%
2:50
19.9%
3:00
TV 88.9%
3:34
90.5%
4:29
88.8%
5:03
91.4%
4:
02
91.5%
4:24
90.4%
4:25
Radio 15.0%
2:37
12.2%
2:14
12.1%
2:31
15.2%
2:26
13.1%
2:35
12.0%
2:33
Newspapers 46.0%
0:51
48.1%
1:00
45.9%
0:52
42.1%
0:43
46.4%
0:45
40.9%
0:46
Magazines, comic
books,
books
17.4%
1:16
17.3%
1:32
19.0%
1:32
19.2%
1:03
21.1%
1:16
23.1%
1:15
CDs, MD, tapes 7.9%
1:36
9.2%
2:05
8.0%
2:01
10.8%
1:32
12.1%
1:50
11.9%
2:05
Videos 7.1%
1:42
9.7%
1:
39
10.4%
2:00
8.5%
1:38
10.5%
1:46
10.8%
1:56
Rest 43.0%
1:09
41.8%
1:17
40.9%
1:24
43.0%
1:07
41.8%
1:10
39.3%
1:13
a
All data originally from the 2001 ‘Survey on Time Use and Leisure Activities’ as contained
in Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications, Statistics
Bureau (2006: 750).
cultural activities, as well as outings, walks and reading magazines (this last
carried out by women), transcend the 20 per cent level only on weekends.
Since these statistics include all people – those who have a job, those who
do not and housewives – we can assume that working people do not spend
much time on leisure activities on weekdays.
Let us next examine the participation rate in a number of leisure-related
activities that 10 per cent of all Japanese had engaged in at least once per year
in 1995, 2000 and 2004 (Table 12.2). In the area of sports, the five sports with
Popular leisure 225
Table 12.2 Participation rate in leisure activities by type, 1995–2004 (%)
a
Males Females
Sports
Activity 1995 2000 2004 1995 2000 2004
Bowling 39.534.631.731.726.726.7
Jogging, marathon 25.928.028.121.421.719.8
Playing catch, baseball 27.325.524.25.16.37.1
Gymnastics 26.327.422.934.934.132.5
Fishing 27.424.322.48.06.85.1
Swimming (in pool) 21.219.618.722.924.421.3
Golf (courses) 23.621.017.63.63.01.8
Golf (practice ranges) 23.
120.81
7.07.34.84.4
Training 14.818.317.08.911.011.4
Cycling 13.116.615.413.812.411.8
Table tennis 11.713.911.311.611.911.7
Soccer 12.010.911.01.92.03.1
Badminton 9.38.97.714.711.413.7
Males Females
Amusement
Activity 1995 2000 2004 1995 2000 2004
Eating out 64.467.863.170.171.468.4
Karaoke 58.549.448.456.048.041.2
Bar, snack bar, pub 54.650.045.631.825.923.0
Lotteries 43.339.044.035.032.339.6
Playing home-use video games 34.031.232.724.424.222.4
Playing cards, etc. 29.526.426.036.226.928.9
Pachinko 38.728.324.816.59.18.3
Playing video games at game
centres
25
.62
2.522.621.518.522.1
Sh
¯
ogi 18.917.113.93.71.71.7
Betting at horse race 21.815.913.17.53.83.1
Mahjong 21.317.211.65.33.62.6
Sauna 11.510.410.28.27.07.0
Males Females
Hobbies and creative works
Activity 1995 2000 2004 1995 2000 2004
Enjoying videotapes 47.144.646.739.840.742.0
Personal computers – 38.046.6 – 24.734.5
Enjoying music (CD etc.) 38.140.437.643.240.039.3
Watching movies
(excluding on TV)
26.428.236.635.935.543.0
Gardening 29.131.227.837.842.340.0
(cont.)
226 Sepp Linhart
Table 12.2 (cont.)
Males Females
Hobbies and creative works
Activity 1995 2000 2004 1995 2000 2004
Watching sport games
(excluding on TV)
25.722.525.016.713.114.4
Do-it-yourself carpentry 24.122.119.13.22.74.2
Studies, research 11.716.917.311.814.316.7
Photographing 12.611.315.47.76.99.8
Music concerts, etc. 14.016.415.430.830.730.7
Knitting, weaving, embroidering 0.70.70.327.426.822.6
Watching plays (excluding on TV) 6.76.57.719.418.716.6
Enjoying fine art (excluding on TV) 13
.01
0.49.922.917.815.1
Sewing, dressmaking 0.50.70.822.618.413.7
Cooking (excluding
ordinary duties)
7.06.16.319.310.713.5
Males Females
Travel and excursion
Activity 1995 2000 2004 1995 2000 2004
Domestic sightseeing tours 55.351.353.461.959.157.1
Driving a car 58.458.152.854.253.647.6
Zoological and botanical gardens,
aquariums and museums
36.935.333.344.841.940.2
Visiting amusement parks 31.930.626.238.734.831.5
Picnic, hiking, field walking 30.229.226.037.834.529.6
Sea bathing 30.523.420.026.421.616.6
Visiting one’s home town 21.720.519.822.623.122.5
Entertainment, exhibitions 22
.81
8.417.028.024.922.3
Overseas sightseeing tours 10.912.811.014.913.410.9
a
All data newly arranged from the 2001 ‘Survey on Time Use and Leisure Activities’ as
contained in Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunica-
tions, Statistics Bureau (2006: 752–3).
the highest participation rate for men were bowling, jogging, baseball, gym-
nastics and fishing, while the five top sports for women were gymnastics,
bowling, swimming, jogging and badminton. In general, women engaged in
sports, and especially in baseball, fishing, golf, training and soccer, to a lesser
degree than men, but in other areas the female participation rate was higher
than the male, namely in gymnastics, swimming and badminton. Sports not
showninTable12.2 are only practiced by very small segments of society.
Popular leisure 227
In activities classified as ‘amusements’, eating out and playing cards
are the only activities in which the female participation rate is slightly
higher than that of men. On the other side of the equation there are many
favourite male amusements, in which very few women participate, such
as visiting bars, playing pachinko, playing sh
¯
ogi, betting at horse races and
playing mahjong. All these can be called typical male leisure activities. In the
category ‘hobbies and creative works’, watching movies and plays, going to
concerts and enjoying fine arts have a much higher female participation rate.
It seems as if Japanese women are much more ‘cultured people’ than men,
but it is probably the case that fewer men are able to engage in such activities
because they often occur during working hours. All the other activities
in which many more women than men participate are those that can be
classified as ‘half work-related’: gardening, knitting, weaving, embroidering,
sewing and dressmaking, as well as cooking. The only comparable male-
dominated activity is do-it-yourself carpentry.
In the final category, ‘travel and excursion’, the gender differences are not
as pronounced. That visiting zoological and botanical gardens, aquariums
and museums, going to amusement parks, and enjoying entertainments
and exhibitions have a higher female participation rate might be due to
many mothers visiting such institutions with their children and without the
children’s fathers.
Age is another important variable influencing leisure activities. This can
be best observed in sports, which show rapidly declining participation rates
for both sexes after a certain age. The most conspicuous example is baseball,
the favourite sport of most Japanese. In the 10–14 years age group, 55.9 per
cent of boys and 10.1 per cent of girls play this sport, but this rate decreases
to the around 20 per cent for males aged 20 to 44, and to less than 10 per
cent after age 50.
18
Most sports follow this pattern of lineal decrease. Some,
however, show an increase with age before starting to decrease again, while
others peak in youth and again in terms of adults.
Sports with a lineal decrease in participation rates for men include base-
ball, volleyball, table tennis, badminton and jogging, but some of these
sports show a small peak for men between ages 35 and 44, probably due
to the time of life when they practice these sports with their children. Golf
has its peak (over 25 per cent participation rate) with men aged 35 to 59.
It can thus be said to constitute the most popular sport for adult males, in
age grades called s
¯
onen (prime age – approximately 35 to 45)andch
¯
unen
(middle age – approximately 45 to 60). Another adult male sport is fishing,
but here the peak occurs between ages 25 and 49. The only sport that has
228 Sepp Linhart
its highest participation rate at a higher age is ‘taking a walk as sports or
light gymnastics’, which from 45 until old age shows a higher than average
participation rate. Females display a return to badminton, table tennis and
volleyball between ages 35 and 44, after a considerable decline between 25
and 34.From45 onwards very few women participate in any sports, with
the exception of ‘taking a walk as sports or light gymnastics’, bowling and
swimming.
One sport catering to the needs of the elderly is gate ball (g
¯
etob
¯
oru).
This is a kind of cricket played by men and women in many public parks
during the early morning hours when the parks are not used by anyone
else and before it gets too hot. Played by two teams with at least five mem-
bers each, gate ball is a very sociable sport. It gained ground among Japan’s
elderly about 30 years ago, and in a very short time became tremendously
popular. In contrast to other sports, gate ball is a sport practiced only by the
elderly, complete with their own gate ball association and national cham-
pionship.
19
Another sport/game that has more recently gained popularity
among Japan’s elderly is boccia, a national game in Italy. Both sports seem
to be popular because they are so sociable, and thus help participants to
avoid loneliness.
A leisure activity thought to be engaged in by women to a much greater
degree than men is sightseeing travels, be it in Japan or overseas. According
to the 2001 Survey on Time Use and Leisure Activities, however, there are
no great differences in this regard in the behaviour of men and women with
one exception: many more young females than males in the age group 20 to
29 embarked upon a sightseeing tour either in Japan or abroad. In this age
group, the participation rate of women in foreign sightseeing was almost
twice as high as that of men. This corresponds to what many women say:
that they have to go abroad for sightseeing before marriage because they do
not know whether it will ever be possible afterwards. It is also an indication
of the high purchasing power of women in their 20s.
Travel agencies have also paid a lot of attention to those women whom
they classify as ‘nice midi’ (naisu midi): women relieved of the upbring-
ing of children, who have time on their hands to spend sightseeing with
their friends. The survey data show that, indeed, women in the age bracket
between 50 and 64 years engage in domestic and international sightseeing
more often than their male peers. Among those 65 years and older, however,
men again dominate.
What is difficult to extract from these survey data are visits to hot spring
spas, a national passion in Japan. Recent media reports tell us that several
Popular leisure 229
Table 12.3 Participation rate in domestic and foreign sightseeing travel by
sex and age (%)
a
Domestic Foreign
Age group Male Female Male Female
10–14 61.459.04.65.6
15–19 43.649.55.37.0
20–24 49.863.99.819.0
25–29 54.563.912.321.4
30–34 56.560.811.213.8
35–39 61.662.08.98.9
40–44 59.955.98.97.7
45–49 52.951.98.88.8
50–54 51.456.09.111.4
55–
59 55.65
9.710.714.0
60–64 57.259.412.712.6
65–69 55.255.610.69.2
70+ 44.238.06.94.2
Total 53.755.39.210.8
a
All data from the 2001 ‘Survey on Time Use and Leisure Activities’ as contained in
the Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications,
Statistics Bureau (2006: 755). Respondents were asked whether they had undertaken
domestic or foreign sightseeing travel during the year preceding the interview.
spas nowadays have discovered a new function befitting ‘grey Japan’. Some
of these establishments have come to be used as custody places for the
elderly during the week, when none of the young folks at home have time
to care for them. The spas profit from this arrangement by attracting more
customers during the week, and the elderly benefit by having a place to stay
with company, and being able to use the hot baths as often as they want to.
Variations in leisure usage: Gender, class, age,
urban-rural differences
Gender and age, as I have already indicated above, are important determi-
nants for the choice of leisure activities. As befits a society with a very high
proportion of people of an advanced age – presently more than 21 per cent
of the Japanese are aged 65 or more and over 7 per cent are 80 years and
older – the elderly have been actively trying to establish their own leisure
patterns. This has led to the creation of old people’s clubs, in many of which
230 Sepp Linhart
Japanese dancing is the favoured activity, old people’s universities, in which
the elderly pursue life-long learning, and gate ball, walking and boccia as
typical sports engaged in by the elderly. Other contemporary hobbies have
had a longer history, such as the cultivation of dwarf trees (bonsai) or recit-
ing Chinese poems (shigin), which have been leisure activities of elderly
men since the Edo period.
Salarymen are often criticised for having no hobbies, because as real
‘company men’ (kaisha ningen) their thoughts supposedly centre only on
the firm. But it is sometimes overlooked that these men have their own
sport – golf – with the whole culture surrounding it, and that many of
them are very good at karaoke singing, which constitutes for them a kind
of musical escape from the strict rules of the company society they live in.
Furthermore, many use the long commute to and from work for avid book
reading.
Women who have passed child-rearing age and therefore no longer
devote themselves to their children’s education often start to redevelop
their friendships from schools or universities. With their former and new
friends, they practise sports like tennis or go to exhibitions, theatres and
concerts, and undertake domestic and foreign travel. Many attend courses
at one of the numerous ‘culture centres’, run either by NHK or one of the
national newspapers. As long as the children are not yet going to university,
mothers are supposed to help them in every respect, and are thus often
rather busy. Such mothers, like workers, do not have much spare time for
leisure.
The four years or so spent at university for many Japanese are the best
time in their life, which many of them devote to club activities rather than to
earnest study. Every university is proud of its many club activities, and these
attract students – often to a greater extent than the academic programs. Many
students do not want to change their lifestyle immediately after graduation
and therefore try to postpone entering a company. Rather, they choose to
work as ‘freeters’ (a word contracted from ‘free arbeiters’) and for hourly
pay, and thus remain free from the pressures big organisations usually place
on their members. They hope that to work in this way for several years will
allow them to continue a more leisure-oriented life.
Children are supposed to study hard from the age of 10 or so, and
especially before they enter high school or university there is not much
time for leisure activities. Due to the shrinking birthrate, there are fewer
and fewer students competing for entrance into the well-known universities,
which makes the once feared entrance examinations marginally easier.
Popular leisure 231
Because the ideology of Japan as a classless society is still strong, in
spite of many publications arguing the contrary since the economic crisis
swept Japan in the 1990s, Japanese scholars investigating leisure generally
avoid researching differences in leisure behaviour by class. To cite just two
simple examples: it is clear that, even though there are examples of famous
people being pachinko addicts, playing pachinko is rather a lower stratum
leisure activity, while playing golf, even if there are some blue collar workers
practising it, is an upper middle class and upper class sport. An empirical
study like Bourdieu’s La Distinction
20
would most certainly reveal that
in Japan, too, aesthetic judgments visible in one’s free-time behaviour are
relatedtosocialspace.
Urban-rural differences in leisure are also important insofar as many
rural areas are depopulated, with mostly elderly people living there. How-
ever, some of these old people are very creative, as is the case in a rural region
in Fukui prefecture where the elderly organised a rather successful theatre
group, the R
¯
ojo Gekidan Bab
¯
azu, which tours the region performing for
other elderly people. For young rural people, though, the manifold leisure
possibilities the cities offer are a main reason for their migration to urban
areas.
Changes over time
In the villages during the pre-modern period asobu, to play, and tanoshimu,
to amuse oneself, were mostly limited to days of hare (bright days), which
were special holy occasions, as opposed to days of ke (dark days), meaning
plain everyday life. On hare days, people wore special cloth, used special
spaces (rooms), ate special food and drank sake. The amusement was collec-
tive, not individual.
21
In the cities, and this clearly was the most attractive
aspect of city life, people could play individually, and did not have to wait
for hare occasions. The marvellous development of the theatres and the red-
light-districts in all larger cities of the Edo period, as well as the existence of
numerous people who made their living from teaching others literary and
martial arts, are proof of the great demand for individual amusement at that
time.
After industrialisation, many companies tried to gain control over their
workers’ free time. Young female factory workers were taught ikebana
flower arrangement and other o-keikogoto
22
in the factories during their
little free time with the promise that this would make them more attractive
as brides. Especially after the Second World War, big companies set up their
232 Sepp Linhart
own sports and leisure facilities in order to make their employees spend
not only their work time but also their leisure time under the control of
the company. Company sports in Japan thus became famous worldwide.
Companies especially encouraged team competitions, like basketball, vol-
leyball or soccer, because they believed that sports such as these would make
employees develop a strong team spirit, which could be easily transferred
onto the firm. With the deterioration of Japanese management principles
during the past 20 years, due itself to the success of Reaganomics and neo-
liberal economic thought, and with companies no longer so eager to secure
workers for their whole working life, company sports and leisure are no
longer as common as they once were.
In contemporary society, individual control over one’s free time has
become the norm and not the exception, as it once was. Neither patriarchal
small firms nor the big companies retain the power to force their employ-
ees into what they think is ‘healthy leisure usage’. Of course, socialising
and drinking together after work with the company group is still very
common, but the implementation of the two-day weekend helped most
individuals to attain independence from their organisation during leisure
time. In addition, many survey data show an increasing tendency to stress
leisure-related values rather than work-related ones as guidelines for one’s
behaviour. Although most people are satisfied with the amount of leisure
time at their disposal and do not wish to have more free time, a majority
of people say that leisure or the family are more important for them than
work or the company. Japan is not only exporting leisure culture, be it
either hardware like electronic goods or software like manga and anime,
its people by now have also come under the strong influence of leisure cul-
ture itself,
23
as was the case with the inhabitants of Edo two hundred years
ago.
Cross-cultural comparisons
Most leisure activities carried out in Japan are not typically Japanese, but
can be found in many countries and cultures of the world. Some of them are,
however, performed in a typically Japanese way, and there are some activities
that are rare outside Japan. Some activities which were once thought to be
‘typically Japanese’ have been exported to other countries, and leisure activ-
ities of other countries were adopted in Japan and afterwards ‘Japanised’.
Of course there are great differences in participation rates according to
cultures, as well as in the frequency of engaging in a certain activity.
Popular leisure 233
Golf is a good example of a foreign sport having become Japanised.
First played in the early Taish
¯
operiod(1912–26) by foreigners on Kobe’s
Rokk
¯
o mountain range, it was practised by about 140 000 of Japan’s elites in
1940, or about 0.2 per cent of the population. While remaining the sport of
the elites, after the war golf also became a sport of the middle and upper
middle classes, being practised especially by people aspiring for a career in
a large organisation. In order to impress people from the company, these
middle class members had to practise, and since normal golf ranges were
much too expensive, they went to golf practice grounds, which nowadays
can be found in every large city in Japan. Furthermore, department stores
set up mini golf practice sets on their roof tops, and some people even
practise at home with a mini golf set. The salaryman swinging his umbrella
like a golf club on the platform while waiting for the train is a common
sight. Thus golf has many connotations in Japanese society, not only that of
an elite sport, but also that of the miserable efforts of a non-elite member
aspiring to climb the social ladder.
Typically Japanese leisure pursuits include flower arrangement (ike-
bana), calligraphy (shod
¯
o), tea ceremony (sad
¯
o), miniature landscaping
(bonseki), martial arts like j
¯
ud
¯
o, kend
¯
o and others. While some of them,
especially ikebana, found enthusiastic reception in Western countries, their
popularity in Japan is gradually declining, probably because they were not
taught primarily as a means of self-expression during one’s free time, but
rather as aesthetic skills which men sought in their future brides.
But ‘typically’ Japanese leisure behaviour can also originate from
present-day society and culture and does not necessarily have to be ‘tra-
ditional’. The great number of fans of comic books and journals (manga)
as well as of animated motion pictures (anime) developed their own cul-
ture, which is now imitated all over the world as ‘Japanese’ culture. The
over-concentration on these hobbies led to one of the strangest social phe-
nomena in modern Japan – the appearance of people living solely for their
hobbies, perhaps as a kind of antitheses to their fathers living only for
their work. These ‘o-taku’ people hardly leave their homes, and commu-
nicate with other fans mainly via the internet. Said to number between
one and two million, they are the object not only of social criticism,
as one might expect, but also of admiration by other anime and manga
fans, who feel unable to similarly devote their lives wholeheartedly and
radically to this one and only specialisation, which in the case of the
o-taku can no longer be called a leisure activity, but rather becomes hard
work.