A Clash of Colonialisms: Sports Culture in Hong Kong Under the Japanese Occupation

After a brief but bloody military campaign‚ the invading Japanese forces occupied Hong Kong on Christmas Day 1941. For the following three years and eight months, the Japanese military administration tried to impose a new social order through the ‘Japanization’ of Hong Kong. The role of sport in this remodelling policy has been largely ignored‚ but it can provide a test-case to examine how superficial that ‘Japanization’ was in practice. This article discusses the sporting culture of Hong Kong on the eve of the Japanese invasion; the immediate impact of the military campaign and the imposition of Japanese rule; the policies of the new Japanese administration in terms of health, education and sporting activities; the extent to which Japanese-style sporting priorities were carried out; and the legacies of Japanese policies and influences after the war ended, including any impact on contemporary Hong Kong-Japan political and sporting encounters.