Doping Issues in Japan

By Yoshitaka Kondo, Chukyo University, Japan

1. The Anti-Doping Movement in Japan

Anti-doping rules came into effect starting with the 1968 Winter and Summer Olympic Games, but it was long believed in Japan that there were no athletes who were intentionally using prohibited substances. Evidence of this was the fact that there were very few instances of doping violations by Japanese athletes after 1968. Because of this, the doping prevention movement was relatively inactive in Japan. What shocked Japanese sports organization was when Yoshitaka ITO, a track and field sprint athlete, tested positive during a random test in 1996. Methyltestosterone, a muscle-enhancing agent, was detected in his sample. Ito asserted his innocence, but he was subjected to a four-year loss of qualifications. This incident built momentum for establishing the Japan Anti-Doping Agency (JADA) in 2001, following the formation of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in 1999. According to WADA reports, the global positive rate is about 2%, but what is the rate in Japan? The number of positive results and the positive rate of doping tests conducted in the past six years are as shown below. Over the six years from 2008 to 2013, the average number of tests was 5,369 of which 3,380 were in-competition tests and 1,989 were out-of-competition tests, the average number of positive violations was 6.5, and the average positive rate was 0.12.

 Of the 39 athletes who tested positive during the six years from 2008 to 2013, nineteen were subject to a reduction of penalties under the Anti-doping Code (Articles 10.4 and 10.5: Elimination or reduction of the period of ineligibility or specified substances under specific circumstances, three-month ineligibility period for a first violation). One violation was during a suspension of qualifications and 19 incidents were determined to be intentional doping, and the qualification suspension periods were cancelled, shortened, or reduced. Based on this, it can be concluded that about half of doping violations in Japan are the result of inattention or careless errors and that there are almost no athletes in Japan who intentionally engage in doping to enhance their competitiveness.

The spirit of compliance is widespread among athletes including managers, coaches, doctors, trainers, and other involved persons. As a result, athletes are hesitant to take drugs even if they are injured or become ill because of fears of a doping violation. Doping violations are not simply a matter of the responsibility of the individual, and other involved persons cannot avoid responsibility, and as a result, active involvement in doping by Japanese athletes is rarely seen and athletes go so far as to limit the use of drugs for appropriate medical purposes.

Japan’s low doping rate has been praised, and there have been reports that it was linked to Tokyo’s successful bid to host the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The number of tests including in-competition testing and out-of-competition testing was substantially increased in 2013. The JOC, national sports federations, JADA, and others, called on Japan as a host candidate for the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic games to more actively conduct anti-doping campaigns. In addition, recent high school physical education texts include content on the Olympic movement and doping for the first time.

2. Review of Humanistic Research on Doping Issues in Japan

Research on doping issues in Japan is relatively inactive. A reason for this is that the image of doping as an evil is firmly established, and other than sports medicine research on the harmful effects on health of doping, almost no research is conducted. The limited humanistic research on doping is described below.

The first research addressing issues of doping from philosophical and ethical perspectives was Kondo’s “A Study on Doping Control Regulations in Sports Contests,” which was published in 1990. Doubts concerning prohibitive rules were raised based on the right of self-determination. In addition, Kondo addressed a theory of suppression of doping based on the strict Japanese social norm of seken (existing between an individual and society), considered issues of doping from the perspective of harm to others, and recently, in collaboration with McNamee, discussed issues of doping as a theory of enhancement based on a structure of therapy versus enhancement. The points of contact between sports and medicine are considered.

                 Fujii’s paper considers the systematic participation in doping under government guidance that was undertaken in the former East Germany until the end of the 1980s. Research on muscle enhancing agents in Germany began during the Nazi era, and there have been reports that human experiments were repeatedly conducted from a eugenics perspective.

Kimura’s paper argues that a humanistic view that does not require an exceptional person such as a God and a physical view of the autonomous individual as a premise of modern sports are superimposed. However, doping, which introduces another person into the body, denies the completeness and autonomy of the athlete’s body. The paper is suggestive of a warning regarding the continuous breakdown of the physical view in modern times because doping has the function of transcending human critical points.

The most recent systematic research on doping issues was a doctoral thesis by Takemura entitled Applied Ethical Research on the Rights and Wrongs of the Doping Ban. This thesis reviews the anti-doping movement in Japan up to the present and research on doping from a social science perspective in Japan and uses Kant’s Deontology as a message to discuss the prohibition of doping in depth. According to Takemura’s review of research, theories of the prohibition of doping in Japan can be divided into the following approaches: (1) paternalism, (2) fairness, (3) the natural state of the body, and (4) modern perspectives of the body.

Fujii M.: Anti-Doping and Fair Play in Germany, (Ed.) Makino The Crisis in Modern Ethics. Bunrikaku, 2007 (in Japanese).

Kimura M.: Aporia in Modern Sports: The Commercial Value of Top Athletes Shaken by Doping and Modern Sports Theory, 6: pp. 80-91, 2002 (in Japanese).

Kondo Y.: A Study on Doping Control Regulations in Sports Contests, Japanese Journal of Sport Education Sports 10(1), 1990 (in Japanese).

Kondo Y.: The Japanese Debate Surrounding the Doping Ban: The Application of the Harm Principle, (Eds.) Schneider A. & Fan H., Doping in Sport: Global Ethical Issues. Routledge, pp 121-137, 2007.

Kondo Y. and McNamee M. J.: Sports Medicine Beyond Therapy: Genetic Doping and Enhancement, Malcolm D. and Safai P. (Eds) The Social Organization of Sports Medicine: Critical Socio-Cultural Perspectives, Routledge, pp. 305-325. 2012

Takemura M.: Applied Ethical Research on the Rights and Wrongs of the Doping Ban, doctoral thesis (Tsukuba University), 2010 (in Japanese).