In this article, therefore, we briefly review how women's sports started, examine the current status of women's sports in Japan, and bring some issues forward for further development.

It wasn't until the end of 19th century that women started to enjoy sports. Yet, only the upper class had the privilege of sporting activities such as horse-riding, archery, golf, tennis, skiing, and skating in those days.

Women's first appearance in modern Olympic games was the 2nd Olympic Games held in Paris in 1900, although only two events, golf and tennis, were open to women. The number of women's events increased gradually after Paris, however, some events were closed to women because of resistance from men. It was in 1920s that women first appealed to the public to have the equal opportunity to enjoy sports as men do. As the WomenSport International was established in 1921 and served as the collective voice of women, women's track and field events started at the 9th Olympic Games held in Amsterdam in 1928. It may seems incredible now, but there were many men who were against women's track and field events in those days.

In Japan, it was around 1920 that female high school students started playing tennis and swimming at school. Competitions between girls' schools and regional tournaments were gradually getting popular and the first nationwide women's championship was held in 1924, featuring track and field, swimming, baseball, tennis, volleyball, and basketball. Also, in 1926, Japanese Association of Women's Sports was established in order to train female athletes to be able to compete on an international level.

Female - 66.9%, Male - 77.1%. What do you think these figures suggest? According to the Management and Coordination Agency, these are the percentages of women and men who employed in physical activity or sport in 1997. Given these figures were only 7% and 23% respectively when the Agency began this survey in 1957, there has been quite an improvement for the past 40 years. Many women now enjoy sports at all levels, as in local community, at school, and at championships.

Another statistics show that women also have made a great advance in high performance sport: 66 women and 100 men attended the Nagano Winter Olympics in 1998, which had 29 women's events, 36 men's events, and 3 mixed events. As for the Centennial Olympics Games in Atlanta in 1996, 150 women and 160 men attended the games and women significantly contributed to gaining gold medals.

In terms of an educational system, there have been several attempts to achieve gender-equitable opportunities and learning experience. In accordance with the revised national guidelines for teaching enacted in 1989, girls and boys now have the same curricula for physical education at school. Until then, girls mainly learn how to dance in physical education class, while boys play fighting sports such as judo. Now there have been many reports that girls and boys even learn together in the same physical education lesson.

It seems that the gap between men and women in sport is getting smaller in terms of statistics and systems. However, many issues still remain unsolved relating to women's sports.

First, there is a fact that the participation of women in sport has always been lower than that of men. Traditional views of gender roles and stigmas attached to women's abilities seem to influence the rate of participation. For example, people tend to feel negatively when mothers enjoy sports utilizing baby-sitters or child-care facilities, while it may not be the case for fathers.

Another issue is that women are under-represented in the leadership in sport. The number of women coaches, directors of sport organizations, physical education teachers, researchers is very small. In 1996, of the total 60,000 trainers who were responsible for local sports groups, only one-fourth was women, which was about 15,000.

Hidden curriculum at school, which covertly imposes womanliness or manliness upon children and fixes gender roles in the society, is another problem. Those who feel uncomfortable about "-liness" are not a few. It is urgently needed to create a society where every woman and man can play and enjoy sports regardless of gender or sex.