Japanese Golf Club Culture: Entertaining with Exclusivity

摘要

Since the middle of the 20th century, golf clubs in Japan have developed their own distinctive culture centred on entertainment of business clients rather than on social interaction. Masaaki Takahashi describes the history of golf in Japan and how some dubs in Japan and Southern Korea are leading the way by creating more modern clubhouses that relaunch the identity of the sport. Golf clubs in Japan have a club culture quite distinct from those in the us or UK. This is largely due to a very different cultural interpretation of what constitutes a club. The word 'club', or 'kurabu', was introduced into Japanese during the late 19th century and was denoted by kanji (Chinese characters) meaning 'group of people to share enjoyment'. This etymology partly explains why for the Japanese the word club does not generally refer to places or activities that are members only. A few clubs, in the Western sense, were founded in the 19th century among the upper classes to bring people together for a particular academic or commercial purpose, but it was the Japanese notion of the club aimed at enjoyment rather than social exchange that caught on in mainstream culture. These 'clubs' brought people together for the explicit purpose of entertainment - eating, drinking, singing, dancing by geisha, fireworks and exhibitions. According to architectural historian Shinya Hashizume in Clubs and the Japanese, the two types of club culture bifurcated sometime between 1887 and 1897. It is a dichotomy that has remained until the present day, with golf clubs belonging firmly to the popular Japanese club tradition.