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Japan needs to tackle corporal punishment in training young athletes
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Human Rights Watch: Japan must #lijfstraffen tackling in training young athletes
Japan needs to address the sports culture in which violent punishments — from slapping in the face to beating — are accepted, believes Human Rights Watch. The human rights organisation spoke to hundreds of young Japanese athletes and sketches a shocking picture.
A softballer from Japan experienced his coach punching him in the face to bleed as the whole group watched. A water polo player was sometimes pushed underwater in his youth team until he almost choked when the coach was not satisfied. It was normal, it happened to all his teammates.
The stories of the softballer and water polo player are two examples from a Monday published report by Human Rights Watch that denounces the abuse of young top athletes in Japan. Physical, verbal and sexual violence in some cases even led to suicide, concludes the human rights organisation. 'Japan is not even close to international standards for a safe sport climate for children', says Minky Groden, the global director of the human rights organisation.
Terrifying picture
In the run-up to the Tokyo Olympic Games, which were scheduled to start Friday only for a year to the summer of 2021, Human Rights Watch spoke with Japanese talents from over fifty different sports. The experiences of over 800 underage athletes give a startling picture of Japanese sports culture.
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Coaches gave corporal punishment, called taibatsu, when their pupils didn't listen properly. If there was a complaint about that, there was rarely anything done with it. Of the interviewed children, only one indicated that there were penalties for the coach after he went too far.
Safety
The human rights organisation wants the Japanese government to ban any form of abuse in sports centres by law. According to Human Rights Watch, an independent institute should be established which will interfere with safety in sport. From that centre there must be clear guidelines to protect children who are sporting. At the Institute, all cases related to abuse in sport must be documented and investigated so that coaches who go wrong can receive an appropriate penalty. Criminal behavior should be reported to the police.
In Japan, until recently, it was legal for parents to beat children to punish them for something. The corrective tick was banned in the Netherlands in 2007. Japan only started drafting legislation in this area last year, after two children had died because they had been too badly beaten by a parent.
Japan has regularly made news in the area of abuse in gyms in recent years. Shortly after the 2020 Games were assigned to Japan in 2013, a video came online in which a volleyball player gets thirteen punches in the face from his coach. The boy underwent the life sentence motionless, while the whole group watched and one present secretly filmed the scene. In the same year, a Japanese judo coach resigned because he had the habit of hitting the judokas from the 2012 London Olympic team with sticks.
Too non-committal
After a storm of public outrage, initiatives were launched to improve the situation, such as several hotlines. But hardly anything changed, says Word. “With some unions, you could only report by fax, which no one uses in Japan. Or the report immediately ended up in the email to the director, who was perhaps the best friend of the coach in question. Sometimes a phone number could not even be reached. '
Former Japanese volleyball international Naomi Masuko was also raised in the Japanese way on the field. During her career, she was only allowed to say 'yes' or 'no' to her coach and therefore learned to suppress any emotion. To change the culture for her successors, she organized a volleyball tournament for children in primary school in 2015 with a clear rule for coaches: getting angry is forbidden. “When I was older, I talked to my former coach about this subject. He said it was much worse for his generation,” says Masuko.
It's a recognizable story, says Word. 'Abuse in sport is so ingrained in Japanese culture that unfortunately no one will be surprised by this report. Abuse is tolerated, because no one dares to open his mouth by the culture of shame.”
In 2018, another video came online in which a baseball coach kicks and hits five of his players during a training. Now that the Games have been postponed for a year due to the coronavirus, Worten believes that Japan should use the time to show that the well-being of young talents is more important than winning medals.
Japan needs to address the sports culture in which violent punishments — from slapping in the face to beating — are accepted, believes Human Rights Watch. The human rights organisation spoke to hundreds of young Japanese athletes and sketches a shocking picture.
A softballer from Japan experienced his coach punching him in the face to bleed as the whole group watched. A water polo player was sometimes pushed underwater in his youth team until he almost choked when the coach was not satisfied. It was normal, it happened to all his teammates.
The stories of the softballer and water polo player are two examples from a Monday published report by Human Rights Watch that denounces the abuse of young top athletes in Japan. Physical, verbal and sexual violence in some cases even led to suicide, concludes the human rights organisation. 'Japan is not even close to international standards for a safe sport climate for children', says Minky Groden, the global director of the human rights organisation.
Terrifying picture
In the run-up to the Tokyo Olympic Games, which were scheduled to start Friday only for a year to the summer of 2021, Human Rights Watch spoke with Japanese talents from over fifty different sports. The experiences of over 800 underage athletes give a startling picture of Japanese sports culture.
ADVERTISEMENT
Coaches gave corporal punishment, called taibatsu, when their pupils didn't listen properly. If there was a complaint about that, there was rarely anything done with it. Of the interviewed children, only one indicated that there were penalties for the coach after he went too far.
Safety
The human rights organisation wants the Japanese government to ban any form of abuse in sports centres by law. According to Human Rights Watch, an independent institute should be established which will interfere with safety in sport. From that centre there must be clear guidelines to protect children who are sporting. At the Institute, all cases related to abuse in sport must be documented and investigated so that coaches who go wrong can receive an appropriate penalty. Criminal behavior should be reported to the police.
In Japan, until recently, it was legal for parents to beat children to punish them for something. The corrective tick was banned in the Netherlands in 2007. Japan only started drafting legislation in this area last year, after two children had died because they had been too badly beaten by a parent.
Japan has regularly made news in the area of abuse in gyms in recent years. Shortly after the 2020 Games were assigned to Japan in 2013, a video came online in which a volleyball player gets thirteen punches in the face from his coach. The boy underwent the life sentence motionless, while the whole group watched and one present secretly filmed the scene. In the same year, a Japanese judo coach resigned because he had the habit of hitting the judokas from the 2012 London Olympic team with sticks.
Too non-committal
After a storm of public outrage, initiatives were launched to improve the situation, such as several hotlines. But hardly anything changed, says Word. “With some unions, you could only report by fax, which no one uses in Japan. Or the report immediately ended up in the email to the director, who was perhaps the best friend of the coach in question. Sometimes a phone number could not even be reached. '
Former Japanese volleyball international Naomi Masuko was also raised in the Japanese way on the field. During her career, she was only allowed to say 'yes' or 'no' to her coach and therefore learned to suppress any emotion. To change the culture for her successors, she organized a volleyball tournament for children in primary school in 2015 with a clear rule for coaches: getting angry is forbidden. “When I was older, I talked to my former coach about this subject. He said it was much worse for his generation,” says Masuko.
It's a recognizable story, says Word. 'Abuse in sport is so ingrained in Japanese culture that unfortunately no one will be surprised by this report. Abuse is tolerated, because no one dares to open his mouth by the culture of shame.”
In 2018, another video came online in which a baseball coach kicks and hits five of his players during a training. Now that the Games have been postponed for a year due to the coronavirus, Worten believes that Japan should use the time to show that the well-being of young talents is more important than winning medals.
Source: Volkskrant
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