THOMPSON, Lee

Doctoral Program / SPORT CULTURE SPECIALIZATION / Sport and the Media

SUBJECTS
Culture, communication, sport, media
PROFILE
Lee Thompson specializes in the socio-cultural analysis of sport, in particular the relationship between sport, media, and society, with a focus on Japan. His research interests include the role of the media in the development of sumo. He has co-authored a book on the history of sport in Japan, and has also written in Japanese and English about Western-style professional wrestling in Japan, the portrayal of Japanese and foreign athletes in the Japanese press, and television broadcasting of the Olympic Games.
Lee is a past-President of the Japan Society of Sport Sociology. He has served on the editorial boards of several international journals, including the International Review for the Sociology of Sport and Communication and Sport. He is a commentator for English-language broadcasts of professional sumo on Japan’s public broadcaster NHK, and is general manager of Waseda University’s sumo team.
BIOGRAPHY
1981 B. A., Communication, Lewis and Clark College
1989 Ph. D. (Sociology) Graduate School of Human Sciences, Osaka University
1987 -1989 Assistant lecturer. Department of Human Sciences, Osaka University
1989 -2003 Lecturer, Associate Professor. Department of International Studies, Osaka Gakuin University
2003 – Professor. Faculty of Sport Sciences, Waseda University
“Everyone is ignorant, only on different subjects.” –Will Rogers Learning starts with ignorance.

From the newspaper Jiji Shimpō, May 28, 1893.

The traditional sport of sumo has been significantly influenced through its relationship with the media.

Sumo—by all appearances a traditional Japanese sport with a long history—has been transformed through its relationship with the modern mass media. In the late 19th century newspapers advocated for the objective evaluation of rikishi (sumo wrestlers) based on record in competition. (The cartoon above is a comical warning of what the upper division would look like if promotion was swayed by favoritism: the aged rikishi are all wrinkled, balding, and emaciated!) In 1909 the Jiji Shimpō established a system to designate an individual champion based on performance over the course of a tournament. The competition for the championship is of course the focus of sumo today.
Sumo tournaments were broadcast on the radio from the 1920s, and a time limit was instituted for each match in order to fit the day’s card into the program schedule. This was a big change not only for the competitors themselves, but also for the spectators.
In the 1950s television brought sumo into people’s living rooms, which was a boon for the sport, but also created problems for the organizers, especially after the advent of video replay technology. Slow motion replay sometimes revealed that the judges had made a wrong decision about the winner of a match. In 1969, after a particularly controversial ruling, the Sumo Association instituted an official process by which video could be reviewed immediately after close matches. Thus, the seemingly traditional sport of sumo is perhaps the first sport in the world to introduce the video assistant referee. It took the International Federation of Association Football another 50 years to follow suit.

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