More Than Medals

More Than Medals is an excellent and well-researched book which will speak to many readers, and which breaks ground in the study of disability sports - not solely in Japan or Asia, but in general!

The author provides excellent background on the organization of sporting associations. Employing diverse sources ranging from personal narratives to mass media accounts and institutional materials, Frost shows that disability sports have offered a prominent, though until now undertheorized, arena in which postwar Japan has interrogated and challenged notions of disability, national pride, and athletic excellence.

Dennis J Frost’s More Than Medals: A History of the Paralympics and Disability Sports in Postwar Japan is a very comprehensive historiography of this topic, applying the author’s careful review of Japanese primary sources, including literature and interviews. Foreign-language speakers of any language have difficulty accessing the references in the field, as I have experienced as a native speaker of Japanese and with English as a foreign language. Thus, I think Frost has done an excellent job with this historical study. Overall, this book has outstanding analyses of disability sports in Japan. I encourage my colleagues in disability studies, both in Japan and outside the country, to read this work.

More than Medals is a meticulously researched book with rich information, including interviews with key people and literature reviews, deep analyses, and powerful insights. It is very readable as well. For me, this book has been a source of great delight.

More Than Medals gives a detailed, nuanced analysis of how disability sports have transformed over the last fifty years. Frost’s study is a welcome addition to the field of sports history.

Frost’s pioneering and well-researched monograph has to offer to scholars and students of sports history, disability studies, and contemporary Japanese history[.]

Dennis J. Frost is Wen Chao Chen Professor of East Asian Social Sciences in the Department of History at Kalamazoo College. He is author of Seeing Stars.