Redefining the "self" through martial arts : ethics, honor, and moral bodies in transnational kendō in Hong Kong

Abstract

This thesis explores the ways in which a group of middle-class Hong Kong practitioners adopted a Japanese martial art, kendō, as a form of self-cultivation and a project to pursue personal ethical goals. The thesis adopts a mixed-methods approach combining document analysis, quantitative survey analysis, and ethnography to examine how the socially constructed moral codes of kendō and its body culture become a “technology of the self” to serve ethical subjectivities. This thesis lies at the intersection of multiple fields of scholarship, including the anthropology of sports, martial arts studies, and the anthropology of ethics. Drawing on a year of ethnographic research in three local dōjōs, the author argues that practitioners strive to refine their ethical selves through regular training, while complying with the highly demanding moral codes and training protocol of kendō’s body culture. The thesis argues that kendō’s body culture and moral codes emphasize self-reliance, self-responsibility, and adaptability, and these values intersect with practitioners’ personal ethical demands. Practitioners wish to pursue a way to cope with the pressure and the challenges of life in a highly stressful global financial city like Hong Kong. This thesis proposes a new perspective to examine processes of ethical self-cultivation in the realm of sports practices, and it contributes to the study of institutionalized spaces of ethical reflection and self-cultivation beyond the spheres of religion and education.