Quoted By:
Why do western viewers always feel the need to distinguish Japanese women's wrestlers as "joshi"?
In the first place..
"Joshi (女子)" in Japanese only means "girl" and does not refer to a specific genre of wrestling or its wrestlers. In Japan, the word "Joshi" is actually most commonly associated with women's pro-sports and public bathrooms (just google image search "女子"), not professional wrestling.
In the context of pro-wrestling in Japan, "joshi" may be used in reference to wrestling as performed by women, but the word on its own is not a wrestling world. So it doesn't make any sense that it has been adopted as a sort of catch-all phrase for Japanese women's wrestling in English-speaking pro-wrestling communities.
In the Olympics, joshi is used for women and danshi for men.
So do you call men's wrestlers from Japan "danshi"?
"Kazuchika Okada is the best danshi wrestler!"
"I'm a big danshi fan!"
Nobody says that, right? So why the need to distinguish Japanese women's wrestlers in such a way?
