ABSTRACT
Japan is one among the very few nations that has had long relations with US policy debate. Individual efforts of Japanese debaters and former debaters often maintained the connections of these two debate cultures. They brought back argument files from the universities that they had visited. This chapter addresses the need for a more systematic, comparative study by examining debate theory and theory debates in practice in the two debate cultures. To analyze current conditions in the Japanese debate community, it describes Fine’s ethnographic method. In order to understand the high-school debate culture, Fine conducted observations of multiple tournaments, debate trips, and the lives of coaches and debaters. The Japanese debate culture has not wholly adopted the US model due, in part, to the unique history of English-speaking policy debate in Japan. On the high-school level, the annual national tournament started about a decade ago and intentionally prohibits debaters from presenting any theory arguments.
