From Corporate Playground to Family Resort: Golf as Commodity in Post-War Japan

From a distance, say on Google Earth, the mountainous landscape of the archipelago would seem to make Japan an inhospitable place for golf. The familiar statistic of the uncultivable 80 per cent of the land mass suggests that real estate might be better turned to other, less profligate uses. Closer up, however, many cities are ringed with the tell-tale worm castings of fairways, bunkers and greens. In the countryside, the bucolic vista of paddies climbing into the hills, abutting the woods that, if not primeval, are still reassuring as to the Japanese ability to coexist with nature, is rudely interrupted. Decapitated hills and shaven slopes announce the presence of a course which is more often than not brown, despite the chemicals required to maintain the pretence of the green carpet (midori no jūtan) that is thought to be the object of desire. At ground level, suburban landscapes are punctuated by the tall nets of driving ranges, city centres by equipment emporia, membership exchanges and even golf bars, while bookshops and station kiosks are festooned with the tell-tale green, and now pink, of golf-related publications.