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Viewing report
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Modern Gladiators: Why is Total Fighting Becoming
Popular in Japan?. Edition No. 1
VDM Publishing House, July 2009, Pages: 228
This book examines ‘total fighting’, which is
becoming increasingly popular in Japan, from several
different angles with particular reference to the
issue of violence, and, at the end, to evaluate the
appropriateness of the theory of the civilising
process, first suggested by Norbert Elias, for
understanding a relatively contemporary spectator-
oriented violent sport, such as total fighting.
This book has two dimensions: first, the development
of combative sports, such as bujutsu, budo and
professional wrestling (all of which have a close
relationship to total fighting) as well as total
fighting, was examined in order to understand the
emergence and growing popularity of total fighting
in the 1990s in the context of the historical
development of combative sports in Japan; second,
the case study of total fighting itself was
contextualised in the broader context of
culture and the issue of violence in contemporary
Japan. These interrelated analyses were informed by
a period of exploratory fieldwork in Japan, and this
context was reviewed in the light of a broader
theoretical discussion concerning the theory of the
civilising process.
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