Karen: Hi Kaori, thank you for agreeing to be interviewed. Would you like to tell us a bit about the Japanese perspective toward sport psychology? Were there any challenges when you first started your practice?

Kaori: Sure. 10 years ago, there were quite a number of “pseudo” mental trainers in Japan. Of course, people who don’t know anything about our field had no idea what proper training in sport psychology meant. However, things changed when Eddie Jones (an Australian rugby coach) came to work for the Japan Rugby team in 2015. He hired me as the team’s mental coach alongside other strength, defense, attack, and scrum coaches. After many months of hard work and winning against South Africa at the World Cup in 2015, there has been increased interest in sport psychology services.

The Japanese Society of Sport Psychology (JSSP) decided since then to establish a proper license and differentiate ourselves from those that don’t have a sport psychology background. Our senior leaders have certainly put in a lot of effort in the JSSP, but there is still a lot of work to be done. We have people in academia and applied settings trying to provide proper services, while we also see business organizations delivering fast-track licensing within 3 weeks or so to compete with us. I am sure other countries might have gone through similar painstaking situations before.

Karen: I agree; it certainly happens in other countries! Do you work mostly with Rugby players? Could you briefly tell us your current client ratio?

Kaori: About 50% are athletes, coaches and teams, and the rest are non-sport populations (e.g., corporate professionals, entertainers, and surgeons). I have received occasional requests from businesses during COVID-19, and I’ve come to realize that corporate professionals are interested in performance and organizational psychology. I would conduct online talks for them or engage in panel discussions. On top of that, I also teach at university, so I have two full-time jobs.

Karen: That sounds hectic. I am aware that you did your PhD at University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Did you practice in the US before heading to Singapore?

Kaori: During my PhD program, my advisors were Dr. Diane Gill and Dr. Dan Gould, but I did my training mainly under Dr. Gould. I loved the different aspects of training there – I remember recording our consultations, building business plans, and giving talks to college teams. I went back to Japan after I graduated but it was difficult to find a full-time sport psychology job, so I went back to being a high school PE teacher for a while. That was actually my job before I left for the US, so I just went back. I then worked as a research assistant at Waseda University for 6 months before I left for Singapore.

Karen: Do you see differences between working with Singaporean athletes versus Japanese athletes?

Kaori: Yes. I would say the biggest differences are the system and the athletes’ upbringing. Unlike Japan, sport is not really considered the priority in Singapore. You need to be a good student. I did not feel that parents were 100% supportive in their children’s sporting achievements when I was there. I remember my athletes found it difficult to tell their teachers they need to skip school even though they were representing their country. The major challenges Singaporean athletes face were mostly about balancing school and sport as well as knowing how to develop a career after sport.

There were cultural and communication challenges when I worked there. I was with the Singapore sailing team back then, and we qualified for the Beijing Olympics. The coaches were westerners, and although I was also considered “foreign,” I am Asian, so I understood the culture better than the coaches. I remember always having to relay messages between the coaches and athletes because I needed to let the coaches know what the athletes were thinking and vice versa. If you look at top-level sport in Asia, it’s quite common for teams to employ foreign coaches. That is why it is important to be culturally competent.

Karen: Would you say that Japanese athletes are more inclined to place sport as a priority?

Kaori: Yes, we are the complete opposite! Japanese people love spending most of their time in sport. I encourage them to do something else on their off days. We also have what we call “corporate athletes” – so say if you play rugby for Toyota, you are able to work for Toyota when you retire. However, they don’t necessarily have the skills to work in a company, and that is when they struggle. These would probably be struggles you wouldn’t see much of in Singapore.

Karen: That’s very interesting. Even within Asia, things can look very different. What can practicing sport psychology professionals in Asia do to bring this profession forward?

Kaori: Doing the right promotion and education goes a long way. Like AASP, Asian South-Pacific Association of Sport Psychology (ASPASP) now has a mentoring program. I traveled to Nepal in 2019 with my ASPASP colleagues to promote sport psychology in countries that do not have this discipline.

One of the issues within Asian countries is the underdevelopment of female scholar consultants. Remember the ASPASP conference in Korea back in 2018? We were both there, and we commented how all the keynote speakers were males. I have also noticed at conferences that there would be a decent number of female graduate students, but I don’t see that many of them practicing after finishing their studies. Perhaps having a rather “risky” career is still a stigma in the Asian culture. If you’re female, it’s very difficult to develop a career after getting married or having kids. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any other Asian female practitioner who owns a business and teaches at university, like the two of us?

In the future, I think we will need to put our knowledge and energy to better use and explore concrete ways to support female graduate students that are willing to take such risks and further their career in sport psychology. I really hope to see more female practitioners in the future!