We need to regard activities that are mainly dependent on physical activities such as sports, martial arts, dances, performing arts and festivals as neither separate activities nor only physical movements but what we call physical arts, which relate to more culture than exercises. And we have to re-evaluate them and promote the study about them.

Such physical arts as culture are essential for us to live better lives and fundamental for both minds and bodies, and have progressed with close relationship to the lives of human beings. And there has been no era when these physical-cultural activities were more popular than today. Taking sports for example, major competitions such as the Olympic games and the World Cup　games are fascinating to us. Top athletes make full use of their techniques and make us absorbed in their skilled performances. On the other hand, at the level of activities of ordinary citizens, more and more people come to enjoy many kinds of sports as part of lifelong education and seek for reasons for living through sports.

It has long been claimed that humanity is about to collapse, but it is the physical-cultural activities that have possibility to make our minds and bodies richer. Thus we seriously have to take into account the cultural meaning of the activities.

From this point of view, our goal is to encourage researchers who, away from the traditional ways of thinking, specialize broadly in physical-cultural activities or are interested in them from different fields (humanities, social science, and natural science) to get together and discuss that object. As a result, the genuine study that establish organic connections between cultural meaning and natural meaning, mind and body, tradition and modern, thought and practice can be accomplished. And we are convinced that it contributes to the development of physical-cultural activities, and what is more, it can be a breakthrough to construct a new academic system.

Society for Studies of Physical Arts
Founder