Japan Through the Lens of the Tokyo Olympics

Ed. by Barbara Holthus, Isaac Gagné, Wolfram Manzenreiter, Franz Waldenberger
Routledge, 146 Pages - 23 B/W Illustrations, ISBN 9780367471682

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORSPeter Backhaus is professor at Waseda University, Tokyo. His main research interests aresociolinguistics, pragmatics, writing, and orthography. Publications include Care communication:
Making a home in a Japanese eldercare facility (2017, Routledge). He also contributes on a regularly
basis to the Japan Times’ bilingual column (https://www.japantimes.co.jp/author/intpeter_backhaus/).
Ch. 19 Upgrading Tokyo’s linguistic infrastructure for the 2020 Games
Isaac Gagné, Ph.D., is a senior research fellow at the German Institute for Japanese Studies, Tokyo andmanaging editor of Contemporary Japan. He is a cultural anthropologist working on mental health andsocial welfare, morality and ethics, and religion. Publications include “Religious globalization andreflexive secularization in a Japanese new religion” (2017, Japan Review).
Ch. 1 Understanding Japan through the lens of Tokyo 2020
Ch. 7 Advertising the Games: sponsoring a new era, Ch. 30 Tokyo 2020 from the regional sidelines
Sonja Ganseforth, Ph.D., is a senior research fellow at the German Institute for Japanese Studies,Tokyo. Her main research interests include critical studies of development, the social and economic
geography of the globalization of agrifood systems, property rights in natural resources and thepolitical ecology of food. Publications include Occupations: Japanese development spaces in Palestine(2016, Transcript, in German).
Ch. 28 The difference between zero and one: voices from the Tokyo anti-Olympic movements
Ch. 31 Olympic leverages: the struggle for sustainable food standards
Steffen Heinrich is a visiting professor of Politics and Economy of Japan at Free University Berlin. His
research focuses on welfare and labor market policies in Japan and Europe. Publications include “Thepolitics of balancing flexibility and equality: A comparison of recent equal pay reforms in Germany andJapan” in: Meier-Gräwe, U. et al. (eds): Family life in Germany and Japan. Challenges for a gendersensitive family policy (2019, Springer).
Ch. 9 Herculean efforts: what the construction of the Olympic Stadium reveals about working
conditions in Japan

Katharina Heyer is associate professor of political science at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa.
Current projects focus on the politics of disability rights within contemporary discourse on prenatal
testing, selective abortion, wrongful birth, and death and dying policies. Publications include Rights
enabled: The disability revolution from the US to Germany and Japan, to the United Nations (2015,
University of Michigan Press).
Ch. 21 The Paralympic Games: enabling sports and empowering disability
Maki Hirayama is associate professor of sociology at Meiji University, Tokyo. Her main research focus
is on sexuality in contemporary Japan, Japan’s failed sexual revolution, and the study of Japan’smaternal society. Her publications include “Developments in information technology and the sexual
depression of Japanese youth since 2000” (2019, International Journal of the Sociology of Leisure).
Ch. 20 Sexual minorities and the Olympics, Ch. 22 Sex in the city, Ch. 26 Sex in the Village
Barbara Holthus, Ph.D., is a sociologist and deputy director of the German Institute for JapaneseStudies, Tokyo. Her main research interests include marriage and the family, childcare, happiness andwell-being, media, as well as demographic change. Publications include Life course, happiness andwell-being in Japan (2017, Routledge, ed. with W. Manzenreiter).
Ch. 1 Understanding Japan through the lens of Tokyo 2020
Ch. 27 Volunteering Japan-style: “Field cast” for the Tokyo Olympics
Hanno Jentzsch, Ph.D., is an assistant professor at the Institute of East Asian Studies, University ofVienna. His research interests include institutional change in advanced political economies, varietiesof capitalism, welfare regimes, and urban-rural relations. Publications include “Tracing the local
origins of farmland policies in Japan. Local-national policy transfers and endogenous institutionalchange” (2017, Social Science Japan Journal).
Ch. 14 San’ya 2020: from building to hosting the Tokyo Olympics
Axel P. Klein is full professor of Modern East Asian Studies and Japanese Politics at Duisburg-Essen
University (Germany). His main research interests are election campaigning, demographic change, andthe relationship of politics and organized religion in Japan. Publications include Kōmeitō. Religion andpolitics in Japan (2014, Inst. of East Asian Studies, UC Berkeley, ed. with S. Reed, L. McLaughlin and G.
Ehrhardt).
Ch. 4 Political Games
Nora Kottmann, Ph.D., is a senior research fellow at the German Institute for Japanese Studies, Tokyo.
Main research interests include personal relationships, “spaces of intimacy”, mobile and multi-local
biographies/relationships, sociology of family, sociology of space, and methods in social science
research on Japan. Publications include Marriage in contemporary Japan (2016, Springer, in German).
Ch. 23 Games of romance? Tokyo in search of love and Unity in Diversity
Daniel Kremers, Ph.D., was a principal researcher at the German Institute for Japanese Studies, Tokyo
until June 2020. His main research interests include citizen participation in Japanese politics,
renewable energies and forestry, Japanese labor migration policies, and the history of ideas.
Publications include “Migration”, in Routledge handbook of civil society in Asia (2018, Routledge, withS. Rother).
Ch. 16 Outdoor sports in the periphery: far from the compact games
Jan Lukas Kuhn, BA, is a Master’s Student at the University of Trier, Germany. He also studied in Tokyo
at Sophia and Waseda University. His research interests include Japanese film, literature, and popular
culture in the context of the post-Fukushima discourse. His MA thesis examines the revaluation of war
narratives after “3.11” in Ōbayashi Nobuhiko’s War film trilogy.

Ch. 11 Ho(s)t city: Tokyo’s fight against the summer heat
Ch. 24 The 2020 Olympic mascot characters: Japan wants to make a difference
Ch. 29 Beyond 2020: post-Olympic pessimism in Japanese cinema
Ralph Lützeler, Ph.D., a social geographer, is a visiting professor at the University of Hamburg andformer senior (postgraduate) research fellow at the Department of East Asian Studies/JapaneseStudies, University of Vienna. His main research fields are population geography, urban and ruralchange, as well as social stratification. Publications include Japan’s new ruralities (2020, Routledge,ed. with W. Manzenreiter and S. Polak-Rottmann).
Ch. 10 Tokyo 2020 and neighborhood transformation: reworking the entrepreneurial city
Wolfram Manzenreiter is professor of Japanese Studies and Vice Head at the Department of East
Asian Studies, University of Vienna. His research is concerned with social and anthropological aspectsof sports, emotions, rural Japan, and transnational networks of the Japanese diaspora. Publications
include Sport and body politics in Japan (2014, Routledge).
Ch. 1 Understanding Japan through the lens of Tokyo 2020
Ch. 2 Olympics and the media, Ch. 3 Skateboarding: “f*** the Olympics”
Ch. 6 Climbing: new sport on the block, Ch. 8 Karate: bowing to the Olympics in style
Ch. 15 Baseball/softball: one more homer for Japan, Ch. 17 Surfing: taken with a grain of salt
Ch. 25 Olympic education: how Tokyo 2020 shapes body and mind in Japan
Ch. 34 Tokyo 2020: connecting the past with the future (with M. Harada & J. Horne)
Sebastian Polak-Rottmann is a Ph.D. candidate and research assistant in Japanese Studies at theDepartment of East Asian Studies, University of Vienna. His research focuses on security, politicalparticipation, and well-being in Japan. Publications include Japan’s new ruralities (2020, Routledge,ed. with W. Manzenreiter and R. Lützeler).
Ch. 32 Security for the Tokyo Olympics
Florian Purkarthofer is a Ph.D. candidate and lecturer associated with the Department of East AsianStudies/Japanese Studies, University of Vienna. His research interests are urban spaces, multisensory
anthropology, critique and hetero-/utopias. Publications include “Practicing criticism: Hyōron, hihyō,
kuritishizumu and the changing structures of critique in modern and contemporary Japan” (2014,MINIKOMI, with P. Mühleder).
Ch. 12 Tokyo’s architecture and urban structure: change in an ever-changing city
Franz Waldenberger, professor of Japanese economy at Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich,currently serves as director of the German Institute for Japanese Studies, Tokyo. His research focuseson the Japanese Economy in comparative perspective. Recent publications include “Society 5.0.
Japanese Ambitions and Initiatives” in The digital future (2018, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung).
Ch. 1 Understanding Japan through the lens of Tokyo 2020
Ch. 5 Number Games: the economic impact of Tokyo 2020
Ch. 33 The Olympic and Paralympic Games as a technology showcase
Torsten Weber, Ph.D., is a historian of modern East Asia and principal researcher at the German
Institute for Japanese Studies, Tokyo. His research focuses on the history of Japanese–Chinese
relations from the modern to the contemporary era, including the politics of history and memory. Heis the author of Embracing ‘Asia’ in China and Japan: Asianism discourse and the contest for hegemony(2018, Palgrave). His current project studies John Rabe’s wartime diaries (rabediaries.hypotheses.org).
Ch. 13 Success story: the 1964 Tokyo Olympics
Ch. 18 Tokyo’s 1940 “Phantom Olympics” in public memory: when Japan chose war over theOlympics