Icon Leichte Sprache Leichte Sprache Kontrastversion
A A A

Japan

Vorlesen

The German-Japanese partnership at dsj

The partnership with Japan goes back to the 1950s. The Olympic Youth Camp in Tokyo in 1964 provided a reason to step up the international collaboration. In 1967, dsj and Japan Junior Sport Clubs Association (JJSA) agreed to a direct youth leader exchange programme. This exchange programme for leaders and disseminators is still taking place today to accompany the simultaneous exchange. In the course of this intensive direct collaboration, the desire for a youth exchange programme between dsj and the JJSA emerged on both sides. In 1973, an agreement was reached with the Japan Junior Sport Clubs Association to carry out a German-Japanese simultaneous exchange from 1974.

Since then, the partnership between the two youth sports organisations has become even more intensive. The organisation and contents of the exchange programme have been reviewed and refined with each new agreement. The friendships that have arisen during the simultaneous exchange have given rise to many new exchange programmes on a private or local level.

On the following website, you will find further information about the German-Japanese simultaneous exchange for young people involved in sport.

www.japan-simultanaustausch.de

dsj partner organisation

[Translate to Englisch:] Logo der JJSA

Our Japanese partner is called “Nihon Sport-Shonendan” in Japanese, “Japan Junior Sport Clubs Association (JJSA)” in English, and was established in 1962 in the run-up to the Olympic Games in Tokyo. It took German Sports Youth as its model. The JJSA aims to offer children and young people the opportunity to structure their free time in a meaningful way with sports activities in their local area – extracurricular education with a focus on sport. Its goal is the holistic personal development of young people.

A major difference between Japanese and German youth work is that youth care and youth work primarily take place at school in Japan. As well as PE lessons, after-school sports clubs are very widespread, which means that a lot of pupils do sport at school even after the regular lesson times. Even though an increasing number of sports clubs have been set up in recent years, which also receive state funding, organisational structures like those of German sports clubs are still not very widespread in Japan. Since JJSA was established, its youth sports groups have provided sports programmes for children and young people as innovative sports clubs. Today, around 570,000 children and teenagers and around 160,000 trainers are organised in around 30,000 local youth sports groups under the umbrella of JJSA (as of 2021).

Country-specific information

[Translate to Englisch:] Logo IJAB

German Sports Youth is a member of the IJAB – the International Youth Service for the Federal Republic of Germany. The IJAB provides country-specific information about Japan that includes comprehensive information about the country in general and about the child and youth policy, as well as a lot of other information and links. This information provides a very good foundation that can be used to prepare for a youth or professional exchange.

You can find the country-specific information about Japan here.

Funding

German-Japanese youth and professional exchanges can be funded from the resources of the German Federal Government’s Child and Youth Plan in the “Longer-term funding” programme. German Sports Youth is a central office for this programme and therefore the contact for all interested organisations in the field of organised children’s and youth sport.

You can find further information about funding here.