Why do People Train Martial Arts? Participation Motives of German and Japanese Karateka

Martin Meyer and Heiko Bittmann
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Martin Meyer: Faculty I, Department of School Education, University of Vechta, Vechta 49377, Germany
Heiko Bittmann: Division of Global Affairs, School of International Education, Kanazawa University, Kanazawa-shi 920-1192, Japan

Societies, 2018, vol. 8, issue 4, 1-19

Abstract: Meyer’s (2012) qualitative research on motivation of German karateka initiated the coordinated research project Why Martial Arts? (WMA) to analyse motives in various martial arts styles, like j?d? , taiji , krav maga and wing chun . In 2017, the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) supported the transposition of the research question to Japanese karated? and j?d? practitioners. For the German sub-study, 32 interviews were conducted about entry/participation motives, fascination categories, and reasons for choosing karated? . The design of the Japanese sub-study was based on the aforementioned German study, but due to the higher number of participants (n = 106), a mixed method questionnaire was used and distributed via paper and online versions. The results demonstrate that many motivation categories of Japanese and German karated? practitioners share similarities in importance and content, although the characteristics of motives can be very different—partly due to cultural specifics.

Keywords: motivation; martial arts; karated?; self-defence; strength; fascination (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 A14 P P0 P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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