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This study explored the relationship between sponsorship objectives and sport team reputation from the perspective of companies. Our data were based on a questionnaire sent to sponsors of Victorina Himeji, which is a professional women's volleyball club in Japan. One hundred ninety-four companies completed a survey about sponsorship objectives, sport team reputation, and sponsorship satisfaction. We conducted factor analysis, cluster analysis, t-test, and a two-way analysis of variance to examine the research questions. The results demonstrated that sponsorship objectives were composed of three factors (marketing objectives, corporate objectives, and team involvement). They were classified into a "highly valued" cluster and a "lowly valued" cluster. The t-test showed that the "highly valued" cluster was significantly higher than the "lowly valued" cluster in all variables except for spectator-orientation. Furthermore, comparing sport team reputation of each cluster with sponsorship satisfaction showed that the more satisfied the sponsorship of both clusters, the higher the sport team reputation. This study concludes that sponsorship objectives are important for both sponsors and sport teams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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At the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, the Japanese women's volleyball won the gold medal, which in many ways can be viewed as an epoch-making event in Japanese post-war sporting history. This article explores the background to that victory, revealing a corporate history of the sport with a prominent role played by Japanese cotton textile companies. It argues that gold medal success at the 1964 Olympics was the result of a history of corporate investment in women's volleyball, in particular by one company, Nichibō Corporation, and tells the Olympic story with a focus on the personal recollections of the women's volleyball team captain, Kasai Masae. Finally, it evaluates the impact that Olympic victory had on the popularity and strength of women's volleyball in Japan in the decades after 1964. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The phrase Oriental Witches (Tōyō no Majo) was used in the mass media to describe the Japanese women’s volleyball team that won 22 games in a row during their tour of Europe in 1961; they became even more famous when their impressive career was crowned with a gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics in 1964. In this paper, I investigate media representations of the Oriental Witches in the retrospective programming of the NHK Japanese public broadcaster. I analyze the Oriental Witches success story as a part of ‘Shōwa nostalgia’—a cultural trend idealizing Japan of the 1950s and 1960, especially the years of high economic growth that led up to the Tokyo Olympics. I argue that NHK actively promoted ‘Shōwa nostalgia’ in the first two decades of the new Heisei era, and the Oriental Witches were a prominent feature of this programming. The NHK representations of the Olympic team, although seemingly non-gendered, provide normative notions of gender roles that ‘proper’ Japanese women should conform to in the idealized Shōwa era. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This feature reflects on the gold medal victory for the Japanese women's volleyball team at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, through the recollections of the team captain Kasai Masae. An interview with Kasai records the impact that victory had on her own life, as well as on the popularity of women's volleyball in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Japanese women's volleyball team's gold-medal was doubtless a highlight of the Olympic Games hosted in Tokyo 1964. No other event drew such an audience to television sets. It is therefore not surprising that the Witches of the East (as the team was nicknamed) are still very well remembered in Japan. But why did women's volleyball enthuse the Japanese to such a degree? Formed as a company team, the Witches and their trainer symbolized Japan's recovery after World War Two. Training intensively after work for the nation's glory resounded well with the people. In addition, trainer Daimatsu had introduced a new technique - the rolling dive. The players went down to the floor to play the ball and rolled over in judo-style. This symbolized Japan's fate in general: falling to the ground after World War Two but coming quickly to their feet again. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]