The Unwritten Essay On Japan's Judo Crisis

This Guardian story on the crisis in Japanese judo is a good start. (Link)

However, the story of purported mentors and leaders succumbing to the spell of committing acts of violence upon young athletes should be expanded further, including:

- politicians getting caught flat-footed, with Minister of Education Shimomura Hakubun having to deal both on the level of sport and education with adult-on-child violence, not the child-on-child bullying violence he has his nostrums for...and all reactionary politicians trying to feel their way around what is the national consensus on corporeal punishment (taibatsu)

- Hashimoto Toru's sudden swerve into absolutism against violence in the Sakuranomiya High School case, seemingly only after he realized the case could be used in his war against the Osaka City school board

- the role of gaiatsu still seems to play in reform, with the international judo federation and the International Olympic Committee putting pressure on the Japan national judo federation to go beyond its earlier investigations and disciplinary measures

- how quickly the Japan Olympic Committee, desperate to win the 2020 Olympics for Tokyo, simply overran the national judo foundation in bringing the scandal to light and forcing resignations

- the role the internationalization of judo, with the continued blind eye being shown to the spoiling techniques Japanese judo despises, has played in pushing Japanese judoka to overcompensate with pure aggression (Ever watch Matsumoto Kaori, Japan's only gold medalist in London, psyche herself up?)

- the national crisis that already existed in the provision of judo instructors for youngsters, after the passage (when guess who was in charge) of an education reform bill that blindly made the learning of a martial art mandatory - without anyone having checked beforehand whether there were enough teachers trained in the teaching of children or that the martial art could even be practiced safely (Link)

Judo is a Japanese sport enwrapped in a host of mystical and ahistorical associations that has gone global. No need for a hook.