Abstract
Whilst ethnographies have long been used within critical sports studies research for their unrivalled windows into the lived experiences of social contexts, researchers have increasingly acknowledged their own active and performative role within them. Recent literature has emphasised the use of embodied ethnography to gain intimate and critically reflexive insights into how moving bodies are read, understood and engaged within research. In this sense the body of the researcher is itself a significant tool for critical examinations of power. This paper reflects on the ways in which, throughout ethnographic research at a New Zealand judo club the researcher was actively involved in shaping the research context, particularly through the physical and social reading of his body. It discusses how his appearance, movement, abilities/skills, competitiveness, social location, gender and ethnicity, both held value for entreé, yet simultaneously were read to confirm dominant assumptions about 'Japan', 'Japaneseness', and judo. In this way it explores how the 'ethnographic research self' both provided opportunities in the field and was also entangled with problematic assumptions and stereotypes.