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PART SPORTS AND HEALTH

PART A Promotion of Physical Education and Sports

Proper sports facilities are essential for the nation's citizens to enjoy sports on a regular basis throughout their lives, for maintaining and promoting health and physical strength thus contributing to a fulfilling life. Their development is vital to sports promotion.

The total number of facilities in Japan has doubled over the past 20 years and presently stands at about 300,000. An institutional breakdown of facilities shows that school physical education facilities comprise approximately half of all the nation's sports facilities. Recently a marked growth can be seen for both public sports facilities and commercial facilities (ones privately managed by companies or industries). Public facilities now represent around 20% and commercial facilities around 25% of the nation's total sports facilities.

Looking at types of facilities, among the principal types, there are approximately 50,000 sports grounds, approximately 50,000 gymnasiums, approximately 40,000 swimming pools (indoor and outdoor combined) and approximately 30,000 tennis courts. Moreover, in terms or scale of the facility; track and field grounds, baseball and softball grounds, and Kendo Dojos are generally large scale while indoor and outdoor swimming pools and gymnasiums are generally small scale. Also, a further categorization of institution shows that a significant number of large scale facilities have been established at universities, colleges of technology and public physical education facilities.

According to the Sports Survey administered to the general public, when asked about improving sports facilities, 61.7% of the respondents said they would like to have closer and more convenient sports facilities available. In terms of a request to the administration this response showed the largest percentage. Hereafter it will be important to improve public sports facilities and school physical education facilities, taking into account the role of commercial sports facilities.

Because public sports facilities play an important role as proximate sports facilities for local citizens and because improvements and developments in sports facilities are necessary to meet the rising public demand, the Ministry is providing financial assistance through local governments for the enrichment and development of gymnasiums, swimming pools, sports grounds and other physical education and sports facilities.

In the 1992 Annual Budget, a total of 7.8 billion yen was appropriated to meet increasing demand for the enrichment and development of public sports facilities. This includes new financial provisions for enclosing swimming pools for indoor use as well as for improvements in international competitive sports facilities (construction or facilities for the Nagano Olympic Winter Games), etc.

It goes without saying that school physical education facilities such as outdoor sports grounds, gymnasiums, swimming pools and Judo/Kendo Dojos are used in "physical education" or "health and physical education" classes but they are also used by physical education and sports clubs as places for club sports activities. Furthermore, opening these sports facilities to local citizens has been highly successful in providing convenient, nearby facilities for lifelong sports activities.

In line with these developments, the Ministry is providing guidelines on planning and designing facilities for prefectures, municipalities and school legal corporations; subsidizing the construction of physical education facilities such as gymnasiums, swimming pools and Kendo and Judo Dojos for lower and upper secondary schools in order to speed up the development of school physical education facilities. Through these and other means, the Ministry is endeavoring to carry out planned improvements for school physical education facilities.

The 1992 budget has allocated 35.8 billion yen for the improvement of school physical education facilities including new construction of indoor swimming pools.

In recent years, improvements in sports facilities have been carried out according to the criteria of the 1972 Health and Physical Education Councils' report entitled, "Guidelines for Improving Facilities for Physical Education and Sports in the Sphere of Daily Life." More recently, however, due to the extraordinary growth in the number of persons participating in sports as well as the diversification in needs for sports, the same council submitted a report in November 1989 entitled, "Strategies for the Promotion of Sports towards the 21st Century" in which guidelines were established as a reference for prefectures and municipalities to use in planning improvements and development of sports facilities.

In these guidelines, the scale and type, etc., of sports facilities are determined for three spheres of the living environment: communities (nearby areas), municipalities and prefectures, with consideration to the appropriate functions of these sports facilities in the respective spheres. As for planned developments in these sports facilities, the guidelines suggest, that, in addition to consideration to the state of the various facilities, attention should also be paid to the following issues: making necessary improvements to open school physical education facilities to the public, developing facilities in accordance with local conditions such as the natural environment, etc., and working in cooperation and coordination with cultural and educational facilities.

From now on the Ministry will be urging local governments to carry out planned developments of sports facilities using the aforementioned guidelines as criteria giving due consideration to actual local conditions.

The Ministry will also endeavor to secure necessary funding, taking into consideration the state of developmental planning and the financial situation of the government.