¹ Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (translation by H.M. Parshley of Le deuxième sexe) New York: Knopf, 1953, p.484

² The headline from the show that broke her story on July 1^st in fact mentioned Ando's goal of training for Sochi, but the media focused on her skating career over her status as a single mother. One of many examples of such followup material includes this Mainichi Shinbun article from Sept. 18, 2013, which focuses on her participation in a German skating tournament on Sept. 26^th as a “first step towards a comeback for Sochi”. The Asahi Shinbun compiled news stories related to Ando and the birth of her daughter, and as the headlines (in Japanese) indicate the focus is almost exclusively on her come-back (fukkatsu) and her return (fukki) to figure skating (accessed Jan. 13, 2014).

³ There are many complex biological and ideological explanations for women's status in sports relative to their male counterparts. These explanations vary greatly depending on where and when you look at the history of women in sports, and there remains great disparity across the globe with respect to how (acceptably) involved women are in sports. The powerful ideologies that have led competitive sports to (still) be seen as a “man's world” are, in my opinion, informed by deeply entrenched social attitudes towards the female body and its capacity to bear children. For a comprehensive discussion of the role that biological differences have played in the development of women's sports, see Jennifer Hargreaves, Sporting Females: Critical Issues in the History and Sociology of Women's Sport (New York: Routledge, 1994). Chapter 5 (“Recreative and Competitive Sports: Expansion and Containment”) discusses “the constant focus on biology” and the enduring effect that many (scientifically-proven incorrect) theories have had on the legitimation of female sports (pp. 105-107).

⁴ As Allen Guttmann has delineated in several books, processes of secularization and rationalization mark the transition from “traditional” to “modern” sports. Modern sports are also highly specialized, bureaucratically organized, and require quantification and/or records (see Guttmann (1991), p. 67).

⁵ See Cahn, Susan K. Coming on Strong: Gender and Sexuality in Twentieth-Century Women's Sport. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994, p. 9.

⁶ “The energy of a human body being a definite and not inexhaustible quantity, can it bear, without injury, an excessive mental drain as well as the natural physical drain which is so great at that time? […] Nor does it matter greatly by what channel the energy be expended; if it be used in one way it is not available for use in another. When Nature spends in one direction, she must economise in another direction.” Maudsley, Henry. “Sex in Mind and Education,” The Fortnightly Review, vol. 15, 1874, p. 467

⁷ Verbrugge, Martha H. “Recreating the Body: Women's Physical Education and the Science of Sex Differences in America, 1900-1940.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 71.2 (1997), p. 286

⁸ A recent public debate over the impact of sports on women's reproductive organs concerned the inclusion of women's ski jumping in the Olympic Games (a sport that was not included until the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi). The president of the International Ski Federation (FIS), Gian Franco Kasper (who is also a member of the International Olympic Committee) said in 2005 that he opposed women's ski jumping because it “seems not to be appropriate for ladies from a medical point of view.” (“Sochi 2014: Women's ski jumpers ready to prove their Olympic mettle.” The Washington Post, Feb. 3, 2014, accessed Feb. 26, 2014).

⁹ Prakash, Padma. “Women and Sports: Extending Limits to Physical Expression.” Economic and Political Weekly. Vol. 25, No. 17 (April 28, 1990), p. WS-25. It should be noted that the number of scientific studies on pregnant athletes are few, but that anecdotal evidence supporting the notion that physical activity does not hinder pregnancy and/or childbirth is abundant.

¹⁰ The most famous was Francina “Fanny” Blankers-Koen, a Dutch track and field star dubbed “the Flying Housewife,” who won four gold medals at the 1948 Summer Olympics. She had also competed at the Olympics in 1936, prior to the birth of her two children, but had not won any medals.

¹¹ Lorber, Judith. “Believing is Seeing: Biology as Ideology.” Gender and Society, Vol. 7, No. 4, Dec. 1993 (p. 572)

¹² Prakash, p. WS-20

¹³ King, Helen. “The Sexual Politics of Sport: An Australian Perspective.” Sport in History, ed. Richard Cashman and Michael McKernan (Queensland: University of Queensland Press, 1979), p. 72

¹⁴ The term eugenics comes from the Greek roots “good” and “generation,” and was first used to refer to the “science” of good breeding around 1883. “Eugenics movement reaches its height: 1923” PBS People and Discoveries: A Science Odyssey

¹⁵ Interestingly, women's sports in ancient Greece were also promoted for eugenic reasons. Writing in the 1^st century AD (about the ancient Greeks five centuries prior), Plutarch noted, “He ordered the maidens to exercise themselves with wrestling, running, throwing the discus, and casting the javelin, to the end that the fruit they conceived might, in strong and healthy bodies, take firmer root and find better growth, and withal that they, with this greater vigor, might be the more able to undergo the pains of child-bearing.” In Guttmann (1991), p. 24

¹⁶ 「「女性は子供産む機械」柳沢厚労相、少子化巡り発言」 Asahi shinbun, Jan. 28, 2007. Yanagisawa later apologized by rephrasing his statement to say that women were “people whose role it is to give birth.”

¹⁷ Quoted in Mackie, Vera. Feminism in Modern Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003., p. 25.

¹⁸ Ibid, p. 112.

¹⁹ “Maternalism,” as defined by Kathleen Uno is “belief in motherhood as an idea validating policies or public actions.” (Uno, Kathleen. “Maternalism in Modern Japan.” Journal of Women's History. Fall 1993, Vol. 5, Issue 2, p.126

²⁰ For a detailed history od the development of women's corporate volleyball teams and their relationship to the textile industry, see Helen Macnaughtan's “The Oriental Witches: Women, Volleyball, and the 1964 Tokyo Olympics” (Sport in History, Vol. 34, No. 1, 2014, pp. 134-156).

²¹ Mackie, 105

²² According to World Bank data, Japan's fertility rate dropped below 1.5 children per woman in 1994, and has not topped 1.5 since.

²³ A number of anthropological and sociological studies of motherhood in contemporary Japanese society confirm this observation. Mariko Fujita's article, “‘It's All Mother's Fault’: Childcare and the Socialization of Working Mothers in Japan” (Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol. 15, No. 1, Winter 1989, 67-91), considers historical and institutional explanations for the exalted position of motherhood in contemporary Japan. For example, popular proverbs such as 三つ子の魂百まで (mitsugo no tamashii hyaku made; “whatever children receive in their first three years will last until they are a hundred years old”) have influenced social perceptions of early childhood and a mother's important role during that period. The idea that no one can substitute for what a mother does for her own family was promoted as official, national policy in the 1960s and 70s, with a government committee comprised of LDP Diet Members adopting a Family Charter (katei kenshō) that said “A woman should recognize herself as the best educator of her child […] It is also a fundamental right of children to be raised by their own mothers.” In other words, the Japanese government's official recommendation during Japan's high-growth era was that working women should and would stop working while their women are young (Fujita, 72-73). While current Prime Minister Abe Shinzō has vowed to increase daycare facilities and extend maternity leave for working mothers, many are doubtful that these institutional changes will do much to change the male-dominated corporate culture that values long working hours.

²⁴ Most famously, track and field star Hitomi Kinue.

²⁵ For a detailed history on the prejudices faced by Japan's early elite sportswomen, see Chapter 4, “From Calisthenics to Competition: Early Participation in International Sport,” in Kietlinski, Robin. Japanese Women and Sport: Beyond Baseball and Sumo. London: Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2011.

²⁶ Perhaps most influential was the Dutch “Flying Housewife,” Blankers-Koen (see footnote 9)

²⁷ Otomo Rio, who was a student in Tokyo at the time of the 1964 Games, draws a connection between the Olympics, physical bodies, and the Japanese nation when she writes, “by watching the smaller figures of Japanese athletes competing well against the much larger physiques of Europeans, Americans and Russians, Japanese audiences could re-imagine Japan as a unified nation-state. The momentum of this, which was imagined as the birth of a renewed nation, was produced through a particular discourse of the body which […] harks back to Japan's’ modernization project from the Meiji period.” (Otomo, Rio. “Narratives, the Body and the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.” Asian Studies Review, June 2007, Vo. 31, p. 118)

²⁸ One of the most enduring memories of the Tokyo Olympics for many Japanese is that of the women's volleyball team, which defeated the Soviet Union to win the gold medal. While none of the women known as the “Witches of the Orient” (tōyō no majo) were mothers yet, media coverage still focused incessantly on their potential roles as wives and mothers. As Otomo Rio recounts, “A popular narrative that repeatedly appeared in the media was that Coach Daimatsu would never allow the girls to take a day off from their training, even when they were experiencing period pain. He himself writes: ‘As they keep practicing a year or two even with their periods, they will have bodies that can endure the same practice even with cramps. […] [W]henever they face games, their period no longer hampers their performance.’“ (Otomo, 121-2). Helen MacNaughtan has also explored the history of Japanese women's volleyball and the public focus on the personal lives of the athletes in her recent article, “The Oriental Witches: Women, Volleyball, and the 1964 Tokyo Olympics” (Sport in History, Vol. 34, No. 1, 2014, pp. 134-156).

²⁹ Hiroyama continued competing until the age of 40, at which point she “retired” from running and gave birth to a daughter at the age of 41. In February 2012, she returned postpartum to run the Tokyo Marathon at the age of 43. Her advanced maternal age and return to running following birth were widely reported in the media. The common trend in Japan of female distance runners marrying their male coaches is a topic worthy of further research.

³⁰ She also took part in the first-ever Olympic judo events for women in Barcelona in 1992, from which she brought home a silver medal.

³¹ Tani was elected to the Upper House of the Diet as a member of the Democratic Party in 2010. She announced in July 2012 that she was leaving the Democratic Party to join the People's Life First Party (seikatsu no to).

³² As this list of athletes attests, elite Japanese “mother athletes” compete in diverse sports, from the more traditionally “feminine” sports such as gymnastics and figure skating, to sports that have traditionally been considered less appropriate for women such as distance running and judo (which were excluded for women from the Olympics until the 1980s and 90s, respectively). While a detailed discussion of how exactly motherhood intersects with these very different sports is beyond the scope of this paper, more detail on this topic can be found in Chapter 8 (“Theoretical Concerns Surrounding Japanese Women in Sport”) under the subheading “Spectacle/Performance” of Japanese Women and Sport: Beyond Baseball and Sumo.

³³ It is noteworthy that, while “sportswoman” was not initially a category for the “best mother award” (awards were given in the music, entertainment and cultural categories), it was added as a category in 2010 and has been awarded annually since. (See here.)

³⁴ Kimura Kaori and Raita Kyoko 「子どもをもつ男女両性の選手の新聞報道の分析：ジェンダーイメージの観点から」 Unpublished conference paper (20^th annual meeting of the Japan Society of Sport Sociology, June 25, 2011) cited with permission from author. As Raita herself asked me after I mentioned my interest in “mama-san senshu” at a recent conference presentation I was giving in Tokyo, “Why do we never hear about “papa-san senshu?”

³⁵ Official population trends and future projections made by the National Institute of Population and Social security Research can be seen here.

³⁶ Explicitly, Prime Minister Abe has publicly proposed creating “an environment in which women find it comfortable to work and […] be active in society.” As Ayako Kano and Vera Mackie point out in their article, “Is Shinzo Abe really a feminist?” (East Asia Forum, Nov. 9, 2013) there is reason to be skeptical of Abe's feminist posture, given past statements and actions he has made. They posit that Abe's use of the term “womenomics” is fundamentally aimed at “recharging the economy and refortifying the nation, not […] improving the situation of women.” (retrieved March 18, 2014)

³⁷ Sanspo.com article, 「ママさん選手要望、NTC内に託児所設置は」 Dec. 20, 2012 (retrieved Feb. 4, 2013)

³⁸ Asahi Shinbun article, 「ママさん選手を支援、トレセンに託児室予約制無料」 June 9, 2013 (retrieved Jan. 6, 2014)

³⁹ The exact amount dedicated to this project by the Monbukagaku shō was 467,314,000 Japanese yen, or approximately US$4.5 million (JISS internal document, available upon request).

⁴⁰ “Japanese Women and Work: Holding Back Half the Nation.” The Economist, March 29^th 2014 (here, accessed June 13, 2014).

⁴¹ Newly-elected Tokyo Governor Masuzoe Yoichi ran on a campaign that directly addressed the need to increase daycare facilities, an issue he also tackled while serving as health minister from 2007-2009 (here, accessed Feb. 10, 2014).

⁴² Prime Minister Abe has promised to put another 800 billion yen (US$8 billion) into government-funded subsidized daycare. However, given that parents are only expected to contribute 20% of the overall cost of subsidized daycare, the Journal predicts that the influx of yen will merely expand subsidies “without tackling the underlying challenges facing the market.” (“Japan Cries Out for Daycare,” Wall Street Journal, Aug. 7, 2013, accessed March 23, 2014)

⁴³ For a comprehensive review of Japan's pronatalist policies, including an analysis of their effect on fertility trends in contemporary Japan, see demographer Li Ma's “ Social Policy and Childbearing Behavior in Japan since the 1960s - An Individual Level Perspective” (here, accessed Feb. 14, 2014). The author concludes that, “the pro-natalist policies since the early 1990s had no visible effects on the second and third birth rates in Japan, but that a possible positive impact of the policies on the first birth is discerned” (p. 39).