부산대학교 도서관

In the last twenty years, the situation surrounding Para sport and Para athletes in Japan has been changing. On the occasion of the 1998 Nagano Paralympic Games, Japanese media began paying attention to the Paralympics. With the Olympic and Paralympic Games expected in 2021, the Paralympics and its significance have become more prominent than ever in Japan.In this study, the authors examine photographs in two major Japanese newspapers covering summer and winter Paralympic Games from 1996 to 2018, to determine how Para athletes have been portrayed by tracing its changes. Our results show the number of published images has significantly increased since Tokyo’s successful bid for the 2020 Games in 2013. The data also reveals gender inequality in the number of times Para athletes appear in the newspapers during the period. In addition, the findings suggest that competitiveness tends to be focused on more intensively than human interest stories. Though this tendency could empower persons with disabilities, it might, on the other hand, make persons with disabilities face segregation and marginalization in society, which could be one of the biggest tasks for the media to tackle.