The use of games and\/or sports as a nationalistic tool\u00a0is an interesting topic. \u00a0While it is hard to think of a sport\u00a0that the United States uses to portray national prowess to other nations, excluding the Olympics of course, sports do fit nicely into nationalistic impulses. \u00a0While all of the readings for this weeks in some way or another discuss the use of physical supremacy in sports as a way of developing nationalism, I felt that Morris in his essay entitled “Marrow of the Nation” brought a particularly interesting point into the argument. He discusses martial arts and its resurrection from obscurity in China during the Republican-era. \u00a0In his discussion he outlines the way in which the government promoted the “national” (martial) arts to help counteract the international stereotype of the sick Asian body. \u00a0Brownell describes it as, “the main motivation behind the campaign for public health was an obsession with erasing the label of “Sick Man of East Asia” that, it was believed, was applied by Japan and the West to the Chinese body” (p. 58). The problem with making the martial arts a universal Chinese symbol of strength and power, was that the art prior to the early twentieth century was still heavily based in oral tradition. \u00a0The argument against martial arts and its spread was that it was not based in science, or in other words, it was not based in written code. \u00a0How could something become a source of national pride when so many variations existed? \u00a0The way this issue really manifested was how to create a systematic rule system in order to determine a winner and a loser, a concept championed by the Western sports popular in China at this time. \u00a0The drive to codify martial arts was not only to create unification nationally, but more importantly to show the world what China was capable of. Morris quotes\u00a0Chu Minyi, a Republican-era government official, as stating, “Then we can give this organized, systematized, scholarly, and methodological guoshu to all the people of\u00a0the world \u2026 Spreading Chinese guoshu to the entire world will mean glad tidings for humanity” (p. 20). Martial arts was an opportunity for a very unique Chinese practice to permeate the world. \u00a0A systematic approach to martial arts had to be created in order for the Western world to accept, and embrace the sport. \u00a0What is interesting is that they were taking an art that was distinctly Chinese, and adding confines to facilitate the worldwide permeation of the sport. \u00a0Competitive sports were central to Western culture, so martial arts must also\u00a0embody the characteristics of a\u00a0competitive sport, if it too would rise to global prominence. \u00a0Morris quotes Warlord Feng Yuxiang in 1927 as saying, “Now it is all just about blindly following the West, \u2026 and when you think about it this is really our greatest shame. \u00a0The Republican-era was doing its best to reject cultural borrowing, and yet it became a necessity to be present on the world stage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The use of games and\/or sports as a nationalistic tool\u00a0is an interesting topic. \u00a0While it is hard to think of a sport\u00a0that the United States uses to portray national prowess to other nations, excluding the Olympics of course, sports do fit nicely into nationalistic impulses. \u00a0While all of the readings for this weeks in some…<\/p>\n