Retrospective: 10th German-Japanese Symposium in Münster
From March 13 to 15, 2018, the Institute of Sport Science at the University of Münster hosted the symposium. It was organized by the Sport Psychology division in collaboration with the Willibald Gebhardt Institute (WGI) and the dvs. Under the theme "Intercultural Sport Sciences," four international keynote speakers gave presentations: Anne-Marie Elbe (President of the European Federation of Sport Psychology, FEPSAC) spoke about the integrative role of sport in multicultural societies, Xavier Sanchez (Halmstad University) about sport psychology support in taekwondo, and Prof. Kazutoshi Kudo (University of Tokyo) about perception and motor control in elite athletes. Prof. Mieko Ae (Tokyo Women's College of Physical Education) presented her own research on corporal punishment (Jpn. taibatsu, 体罰) of female students in Japanese physical education — a topic that continues to be debated at the political level, and one that illustrates how closely sport science in Japan is intertwined with questions of power, gender, and pedagogical responsibility.
The hosting Willibald Gebhardt Institute was founded in Essen in 1992 and has been based at the University of Münster since 2017.
In conversation with: Prof. Dr. phil. Dr. h.c. Roland Naul
What is the German-Japanese Symposium on Sport Science?
It is an intercultural symposium on research questions in sport science, and this year it takes place for the twelfth time. Numerous universities and research institutes from Germany and Japan take part. They agree among themselves who will host the next symposium, and it alternates between the two countries. Since 2018, the national academic organizations on both sides have been on board: in Germany the Deutsche Vereinigung für Sportwissenschaft (dvs), in Japan the Japan Society of Physical Education, Health and Sport Sciences (JSPEHSS).
How did you come to be involved in this German-Japanese exchange?
It actually goes back to the 1920s and 1930s. After the end of the Meiji period, there was lively exchange between educators, gymnasts, athletes and scholars in Germany and Japan, supported by their respective universities. After the war, there was a long standstill, until German and Japanese scholars began meeting again at international events such as Olympic congresses or world congresses of individual disciplines. In the 1980s, there were then several study trips: two or three well-known Japanese professors (Prof. Dr. Jūjirō Narita, Prof. Dr. Meida, Prof. em. Dr. Soichi Ichimura) visited West Germany to get to know German sport science and their colleagues, and there were invitations to Japan in return. The founding figures of this exchange were, on the German side, the Bonn sport historian Hajo Bernett and the Tübingen sport educationalist Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Ommo Grupe, and on the Japanese side Prof. Dr. Jūjirō Narita (成田十次郎) from Tokyo and the psychologist Soichi Ichimura from the University of Tsukuba. I myself have been part of this informal exchange since 1988, above all with Prof. em. Dr. Soichi Ichimura (市村操一). At that time I was a university professor in Essen (1980–2013), before spending my final years as a senior professor in Münster (2013–2020).
How did the informal exchange become a symposium, and what changed in 2018?
In the early 1990s, the idea arose to widen the circle. Rather than always having just two or three German colleagues meet two or three Japanese colleagues, the aim was a larger format, known in both countries. The first German-Japanese Symposium then took place in 1995, organized by Prof. Dr. Haag in Berlin and by Prof. Grupe. From then on, depending on circumstances, a symposium was held every two to three years in changing cities in Japan and Germany, always affiliated with a scientific institute or a faculty of sport science. In 2018, the seventh symposium took place here in Münster. There, an agreement was signed that involves the national academic organizations more closely. Since then, overall organization no longer lies with one individual university in Japan and one in Germany, but with the dvs and the JSPEHSS.
Who can take part, and what is on the agenda for the twelfth symposium in Ludwigsburg?
There is an open call for papers, aimed at scholars at all career stages from the participating universities, but also at anyone in the field. This time, the application and review process is being led by my colleague Prof. Dr. Annette Hofmann in Ludwigsburg, who herself used to be at the Institute of Sport Science in Münster. At the twelfth symposium, I will take part together with my colleague Prof. Dr. Dieter Teipel of the University of Jena, who spent several years as a professor in the Japanese higher education system. Our topic will be a personal one: we will recall the stages in the symposium's development over the last 40 years, and the friends from the founding generation of this exchange who have since passed away. This has almost become a tradition by now. At every symposium, we look back on deceased colleagues and honor what they contributed to the development of this exchange. This time, that applies to our colleague Prof. Ichimura, but also to Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Herbert Haag, who has likewise passed away. The last symposium was three years ago, in 2023 at the University of Tokyo of Sport Science.
Are there any particularly formative or memorable moments from the past years?
Many. When we were in Berlin in 1995, the Japanese guests visited the Olympic Stadium with great enthusiasm and saw exhibitions on the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. Conversely, in 1996 in Tokyo we stayed in the Olympic Village of the 1964 Games and visited the Olympic Stadium and Olympic Museum there. Those were special moments. The same goes for meeting distinguished athletes who drop by on the occasion of the symposium. Cultural experiences also stay with you: seeing Japan's great temple landscapes, for example, is a milestone in itself.
Were there also challenges in the collaboration?
Between 2005 and 2010, there was a major economic crisis that also hit Japanese universities. As a result, we fell out of our usual rhythm of two to three years: in 2005 we were at the University of Jena, and then only in 2010 again in Tokyo. The overall financial situation in the country, but also at individual universities, has thus always influenced how quickly or slowly the next meeting came about. Financially, the symposium has in any case always been a small-budget format: usually the host provides accommodation, whereas travel costs were never reimbursed reciprocally. Anyone flying to Japan had to cover it through the travel budget of their own university or a research project, or else pay out of pocket. Essentially, not much has changed in this respect to this day, but because we have broadened the circle of participants through participation fees and additional sponsors outside the universities, things have become somewhat easier financially overall. We also had to rethink documentation for cost reasons: five or six earlier symposia were still published as books, whereas the later ones, above all those from the 2010s, exist only digitally as PDFs.
What connects and what distinguishes German and Japanese sport science?
Each symposium has an overarching theme that is deliberately broad, so that it fits the whole range of sport science. This year it extends from history, education, psychology and philosophy to natural-science topics such as medicine, biomechanics and training science. In addition, there are always sections on very specific topics from individual disciplines. We are flexible when it comes to language: papers are given in German, English and sometimes Japanese. Japanese colleagues in particular often speak very good German because they are interested in German culture, and sometimes prefer to present in German rather than English. One German colleague of ours even gave his paper in Japanese at the request of the Japanese side and supplied an English abstract. In terms of content, one learns a great deal about different cultures of scholarship and publishing. I always found the discussions around Japanese martial arts such as judo, sumo or taekwondo especially instructive. There, for example, people debate whether these are "sport" at all in the Western sense, since martial arts have a different philosophy and orientation. This is already visible in greeting rituals: people do not shake hands but bow, which is a completely different, more formal body language than the handshake we are used to. Such differences are also reflected in research questions. When I began researching women's football in Germany in the early 1990s, a topic that was hardly taken seriously here at the time, I found in Japan that the first female students working on it almost all came from volleyball or gymnastics, and behaved very differently toward their opponents on the pitch than German women footballers. That was a good gauge of how different the socialization of physical techniques can be from one country to another, even in the same game with the same rules. Through the increasing internationalization of women's football, however, these cultural differences have of course largely leveled out over the last three decades.
How do you see the future of this collaboration?
I would like to see more joint projects: a Japanese team from two universities, a German team from two others, and these four partners jointly investigating a research question over two, three, four years as a longitudinal study, rather than only at isolated points in time. Japanese and German colleagues would then be directly involved in the same scholarly discussion and complement one another, and the results could be compared far more directly than when similar but not quite identical studies are run in parallel in Japan and in Münster or Tübingen. I still see room for qualitative improvement there. So, all in all, more integrative, truly joint research.
Many thanks to Prof. Dr. Naul for the wonderful conversation!
Prof. Dr. phil. Dr. h.c. Roland Naul
Prof. Dr. phil. Dr. h.c. Roland Naul was Senior Professor for European Studies in Physical Education and Youth Sport at the Institute of Sport Science at the University of Münster (2013–2020) and Director of the Willibald Gebhardt Institute, a research institute for sport and society in Essen (1992–2017). Naul served as President and Secretary General of the Conseil Européen des Recherches en Éducation Physique et Sportive (CEREPS) and was awarded an honorary doctorate by Charles University in Prague in 2017. Since 1988, he has been part of the German-Japanese exchange in sport science. Contact
