14

Olympic dreams
and traumata

The Study

Looking backat Tokyo 2020

Olympic Dreams
and Traumata
Looking Back at Tokyo 2020
Torsten Weber

Fig. 1 (left): “Tokyo 1964, Tokyo 2020” banner at
Tokyo’s Haneda Airport (Photo by the author).
Fig. 2 (above): Poster by Japanese Communist Party
demanding the cancellation of the Olympics andParalympics (Photo by the author).
Fig. 3 (left): Anti-Olympic protest in front of the Japan
Olympic Museum (Photo courtesy of Barbara Holthus).

On 8 August 2021 at 10.19 p.m. local time, the Olympic flame wasextinguished in the new National Stadium in Tokyo. This marked the endof historic Games: the first time ever that they were postponed for a year,
and the first time ever that they were held (almost) without live spectators.
The fact that Tokyo is also the first city in Asia to host the Games twice was
eclipsed by the pandemic, as were Tokyo's and Japan's original ambitions
to repeat the success and emotions of Tokyo 1964. Back then, Japan had
impressed the world with, among other things, the high-speed Shinkansenbullet train, live satellite broadcasting, and its unbeatable women's volleyballteam. Those Games had injected new self-confidence into its nation after
the destruction, defeat, and isolation left in wake of World War II.

The myth of zerorisk games“1964 once again” was one of the mottos
with which the organizers wanted to get theJapanese into the Olympic mood since thesuccessful bid for Tokyo 2020 in September
2013 [Fig. 1].1 In the midst of the pandemic,
however, the references to the first Summer
Olympics in Asia 57 years ago were of lessinterest than the daily updated infection
figures in Tokyo and all of Japan: there were1359 (Tokyo)/4223 (Japan) new infections
on the day of the opening ceremony, andthis number more than tripled to 4066/14472
by the day of the closing ceremony.2 Shortly
before the start of the Games, Tokyo had
extended its state of emergency. On the
day of the closing ceremony, a state of
emergency was in place in six prefectures,with a quasi-state of emergency in 13 others.
The 7-day incidence per 100,000 inhabitantson the closing day was 196 in Tokyo. In
Tokyo's neighbouring Olympic prefectures,
this number had risen to 126 in Kanagawa(sailing, baseball, softball, football), to 106
in Saitama (football, basketball, golf), andto 100 in Chiba (surfing, fencing, wrestling,taekwondo). On the opening day, thenumbers had still been as low as 69 in Tokyo,
37 in Kanagawa, 31 in Saitama, and 30 in
Chiba – making this a median increase ofover 200 percent. Among the participants in
the Olympics alone, the number of infected
people had risen to 553 by the final day.
Nevertheless, Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide
and Olympic Minister Marukawa Tamayo
declared that “the increase has nothing to
do with the Olympics.” They agreed with
International Olympic Committee (IOC)President Thomas Bach, who had promised
before the Games that there would be “zerorisk for the Japanese people.” Bach was
ridiculed for this, also because he initially spokeof “Chinese” instead of “Japanese people.”
Was he already thinking about the next IOC

playground, the 2022 Olympics in Beijing?
Was Tokyo 2020 just a stopover on theseemingly endless journey of the IOC troop, led
by Bach, that rakes in billions in profits at theexpense of the local hosts and population?

Criticism of ‘Olympic
aristocracy’
Bach had already come under heavy
criticism in the weeks before the opening
because he wanted to hold on to the Olympics
at all costs, despite an increasing number ofpeople in Japan being opposed to holding
the Games during the pandemic. In May 2021,
an Asahi opinion poll revealed that 83 percent
were against holding the Games amidst theongoing pandemic [Fig. 2]. Only 14 percent
supported the decision by the government
and IOC to hold the Games this summer.
In due course, (now former) Prime Minister
Suga's popularity plummeted to a historic
low of 33 percent shortly before the opening
ceremony in July and fell to 29 percent after
the Games in August. During the Paralympics
in early September, Suga announced hewould retire from his posts as leader of theruling Liberal Democratic Party and Prime
Minister. This political damage occurred
despite the success of the Japanese athletes
and despite the fact that the local hosts had
defied the IOC’s urging to allow spectators
after all. Bach had invoked a supposedly
special Japanese culture of resilience andperseverance in an attempt to persuade theJapanese side to allow spectators into thestadiums and other sports venues.
Bach’s attitude earned him the nickname“Baron Von Ripper-off,” who, together with
the IOC, “has a bad habit of ruining theirhosts, like royals on tour who consume all
the wheat sheaves in the province and leave
stubble behind”.3 The Japanese translation of“Baron Von Ripper-off” as bottakuri danshaku(ぼったくり男爵) went viral on social media.

When Bach arrived in Japan in early July,protesters outside his luxury hotel demandedthat he go home. Instead, Bach went toHiroshima to spread his message of the
Olympics as a celebration of peace. Bach did
not heed the government's recommendation
to refrain from non-essential travel, nor
did he comply with the 14-day quarantine
mandatory for others entering the country.
On top of that, the IOC refused to cover thecosts for the security measures in Hiroshimaof about 3.8 million Yen (30,000 Euro), leaving
the city of Hiroshima to pick up the tab.
Nevertheless, the critique of “Olympic
aristocracy” and Olympic “celebration
capitalism”4 in Japan remained theweak movement it had been from the
beginning. Already in 2013, an anti-Tokyo
2020 movement consisted of a handful ofprotesters. But against the background of
the pandemic, opposition to the Games
continued to rise and was joined by thenational union of doctors, nurses, andnewspapers, as well as celebrities such as
Olympic swimmer Matsumoto Yayoi and
Rakuten founder Mikitani Hiroshi, who called
the plans to hold the Olympics amidst the
pandemic a “suicide mission.” Within weeks,
352,000 people signed a petition to cancel
the Olympics, organized by lawyer-activist
Utsunomiya Kenji, who presented the petition
to Tokyo’s governor Koike Yuriko in May.
Nevertheless, anti-Olympics demonstrations
rarely drew more than several dozen people[Fig. 3 and 4]. In Greater Tokyo, even thelargest demonstrations saw less than 0.001
percent of the area’s more than 30 million
people participate. As Sonja Ganseforthwrites, the core of the demonstrators wasprimarily concerned with making a simple
statement: showing “the difference between
zero and one.”5 Public protest against social
or political grievances remains the preserveof a tiny minority in Japan, even if the Games
have ensured that media coverage has madedemonstrations more visible than before.

A push for human rights?
Indeed, some of the strongest criticism ofTokyo 2020 and the IOC came from outsideof Japan. And as ever, the Japanese decisionmakers grudgingly caved in to pressure fromabroad (外圧 gaiatsu): among others, thePresident of the Organizing Committee Mori
Yoshiro, opening ceremony music composer
Oyamada Keigo, and creative directors Sasaki
Hiroshi and Kobayashi Kentaro resigned
or were fired because of sexist comments,
bullying of classmates with disabilities, andHolocaust mockery, respectively. In all cases,
pressure came from international media andorganizations, including the Simon Wiesenthal
Center. Although the decision-makers reacted
relatively quickly, the question remains as towhy such discriminatory statements and views,
some of which have been publically known
for years, are apparently not an obstacle tooccupying prominent positions in Japanesesociety. What mechanisms are at work that do
not prevent this from happening in a pluralisticand democratic society like Japan? Or is it
possible that the majority of Japanese society
lacks awareness of human rights, diversity,and inclusion? Former Japanese diplomat
Tanaka Hitoshi wrote after one of the scandals:“Japan is only now learning how important
human rights are.”
For decades, people have talked andwritten about Japan's “lost decades,” referring
to Japan's weak economic development –especially in comparison to South Korea andChina – after the country’s economic bubble
burst in 1989. Does Japanese society now also
have to admit that it has lost decades in termsof equality, diversity, internationalization,and human rights? Who within Japan is able
to explain current international debates andstandards to the Japanese society? When
will international experience abroad andmultilingualism – prerequisites for knowing
and understanding the world outside of Japan– stopped being seen as a flaw and a career
brake, rather than as a plus? Appreciating

The Newsletter No. 90 Autumn 2021

international experience and interculturalcompetence should be a matter of course
in a country that courts recognition fromabroad like hardly any other highly developed
industrial country – be it through Nobel
Prizes or international mega-events such as
the Olympics or World Expositions (which isscheduled to be held in Osaka in 2025, a record
third time in Japan after World War II).
As Robin Kietlinski writes, “Japan has
essentially been lobbying, bidding, preparing
for, or hosting the Olympic Games almost
constantly since the 1930s,” including bids
for 1984 (Sapporo), 1988 (Nagoya), 1998
(Nagano), 2008 (Osaka), 2016 and 2020 (bothTokyo).6 And despite Japan’s sour experience
with Tokyo 2020, the next Japanese city is
preparing its next Olympic bid: Sapporo, where
this year’s Olympic marathon events took
place, is set to apply to host the 2030 WinterGames. Should its bid be successful, the cityin the far north of Japan would win the bid forthe third time after 1940 and 1972. The 1940
Winter Games, of course, did not take placebecause of World War II, just like the 1940
Summer Games, which the IOC had awarded
to Tokyo in 1936. Tokyo would have been thefirst city outside Europe and America to hostthe Games in 1940. At that time, Japan was
already deeply enmeshed in the war against
China. It had occupied Manchuria in 1931,
founded the puppet state of Manchukuo there
in 1932, and left the League of Nations in 1933.
While preparations for the 1940 Olympics
were underway, Japanese soldiers massacredtens of thousands of civilians in the Chinese
capital of Nanjing (“Nanking Massacre”).
It was not until July 1938 that the IOC, theJapanese Olympic Committee (JOC), Tokyo,
and the Japanese government agreed to
officially return the right to host the Games tothe IOC. "Tokyo 1940" never took place and,
therefore, went down in history as the Phantom
Olympics.7 Unlike the omnipresent references
to 1964 in Japan’s public sphere in the run-up
to Tokyo 2020, the history and legacy of theforfeited Games of 1940 was largely ignoredor downplayed.8

Japan’s Olympic traumata
While not hosting the 1940 Games wasdue to actions of aggression by Japan, thepostponement of Tokyo 2020 was hardly
Japan’s fault. Consequently, the old guardof Japanese politicians, symbolically led by
the longest serving Deputy Prime Ministerin Japanese history, Aso Taro (in office
2012-2021), prefers to blame higher powers
for Japan's Olympic traumata. Aso spokeof “cursed Olympics every 40 years:” thePhantom Olympics in 1940, the Boycott
Olympics in 1980,9 and the Corona Olympics
in 2020. Of course, the pandemic cannot be
blamed on Japan, but the handling in Japan
has been problematic from the start. Insteadof taking the situation seriously, the problem
was ignored until the 2020 Games were finally
postponed in March 2020. The next day, theJapanese government suddenly admitted
that there was a problem with the pandemic
in Japan after all. When the infection figures
briefly dropped in the summer of 2020, theJapanese government launched its “Go To
Campaign,” with which travel across thecountry and restaurant visits were subsidized
by up to 50 percent. In the short term, thisbenefited hotels and restaurants, as well as
the population eager to travel. In the long term,
it benefited the virus. To be sure, the lurchingcourse of the Japanese government has notexactly helped to convince the population
how best to deal with the pandemic. This also
applies to the decision to hold the Games thissummer. “The hosting of the Olympics andthe world gathering in Tokyo has given thewrong signal to the population,” says Barbara
Holthus, a sociologist at the German Institutefor Japanese Studies in Tokyo and main
editor of Japan Through the Lens of theTokyo Olympics.

The Study

Japanese team. In the new events of surfing,climbing, skateboarding, karate, baseball,and softball alone, Japanese athletes won
14 medals. In total, Japanese athletes won
58 medals, including 27 gold. Both are new
Olympic records. A total of 20 new world
records were set at Tokyo 2020 as well. But
were the competitions fair, beyond the usualsuspicions of doping? In an interview with theJapanese edition of Newsweek, JOC board
member and Olympic medalist Yamaguchi
Kaoru criticized the Games as “dangerous
and unfair.” Because of the COVID-19 contact
restrictions, foreign athletes lacked proper
training opportunities upon arrival in Japan
while “the Japanese athletes got to practiceand prepare as normal before the big day.”This “host nation advantage” was further
strengthened by the fact that – given thestrict rules regulating the athletes’ stay andmovement – foreign athletes had less time toovercome jet lag and, above all, to get used
to the inhospitable climate, which proved
disadvantageous for long-distance travelers
and those not used to a subtropical summer
with 80% humidity. In the men's marathon,
which had been specially moved to the
supposedly milder climate of Sapporo, only athird of the runners finished the race due to thehigh physical stress caused by the humidity.
This was also a new Olympic record.
More than the sports, evaluations of theTokyo 2020 Olympic legacy will probably bedominated by the pandemic and the financial
costs. Experts estimate that the postponement
by one year and the loss of revenue (e.g.,
from ticket sales) cost at least 4 billion Yen(31 million Euros). The total cost of the Gamesis now estimated at up to 25 billion Euros, yetanother Olympic record.11 Who else will haveto foot this bill but the Japanese taxpayer?
Not included in these figures are costs forthe prolonged and worsened situation due
to the spread of COVID-19. By excluding
the public and banning public viewing, theOlympics-induced rise in infections may havebeen kept in check to some extent. But many
Japanese took advantage of the loopholes
at the torch relays through Japan and at theoutdoor running and cycling tracks, such as
the Olympic walking and marathon events in
Sapporo. There, people stood close together
to cheer on the runners and walkers. The very
decision to hold the Games and allow tens of
thousands of athletes and officials into thecountry for the Games may have encouraged
parts of the population in Japan to not takethe COVID-19 restrictions too seriously. If
the IOC and JOC have the confidence tohold “safe and secure” Games with tens of
thousands of guests from abroad, then surely
having dinner with a few friends or drinks withcolleagues cannot be too dangerous?

The pitfalls of Japan’s
safe and secure-ism“Safe and secure” (anzen anshin 安全安心)
has probably been the most used expression
in the Japanese public in connection with
the Tokyo Olympics in recent weeks andmonths. It is not surprising that a study

by the Mitsubishi Research Institute (MRI)
found that most Japanese named as their
desired Olympic legacy “the safest society
in the world, where both the population andvisitors feel secure.”12 However, respondents
did not state this goal after the outbreak of
the pandemic, as one may expect. Instead,this was the top response in all six surveys
conducted by the MRI from 2014 to 2019 –that is, prior to the pandemic. Anzen anshin ispart of the consciousness of many Japanesethat has contributed to making Tokyo oneof the safest mega-metropolises in the world.
At the same time, however, the triple disasterof earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown
in March 2011 has revealed the emptinessof this slogan in the face of real crisis.
Comparing the triple disaster and the
pandemic, Okada Norio, an expert in disasterprevention research at Kwansei Gakuin
University, warns that the awareness andpreparation for disasters in Japan is not
sufficient. “The central government is too
far away from many crisis frontlines, too
bureaucratic, slow, and passive,” Okada
says. “Another problem is that politicians
and scientists are reluctant to communicate
problems to ordinary people or to shareimportant information with the public.”13
At least regarding the ongoing pandemic,
the reluctance of scientists to communicate
the seriousness of the situation to theJapanese public seems to have been less of aproblem than the willingness of the Japanese
government and Olympic stakeholders toadmit how dangerous the situation really is.
In the long run, comparisons with Japan’s
handling of the triple disaster may not seemtoo far-fetched. Japan’s pandemic-related
death toll surpassed 15,000 shortly before
the opening of the Games in July and rose to
16,373 on the day of the closing ceremony of
the Paralympics. It looks set to overtake theofficial death toll of the triple disaster of 2011
(19,747) before the end of 2021. The current
number of COVID-19 related deaths in Japanis much lower than death rates per capita
in countries like the United States, Russia,
and Germany. But it is considerably higher
compared to other countries in the region that
implemented similarly rigorous immigration
policies to control the pandemic, includingSouth Korea (2,315), Australia (1,036), and
New Zealand (27).14 The initial branding ofTokyo 2020 as ‘Recovery Games’ to show theworld that Japan had overcome the shock
and damages of the triple disaster had been
criticized even before the outbreak of thepandemic: instead of supporting the people
and areas that had been affected most, themassive Olympic budget took away resources
needed for rebuilding the destroyed areas,
preparing for future disasters, and promoting
sustainable alternatives to nuclear energy.
In his bidding speech at the IOC meeting in
Buenos Aires in 2013, then Prime Minister Abe
Shinzo famously claimed that the situation in
Fukushima “is under control” and that Tokyo
was “one of the safest cities in the world, now… and in 2020.”15 Eight years later: different
Prime Minister, different crisis, similar rhetoric.
Which lessons has Japan learnt from thetriple disaster?

Legacies of Tokyo 2020:
gold, debts, infections
What will remain as the legacy of theCorona Olympics and how will the Gamesbe remembered? The sporting successes are
undisputed – and were to be expected for the

Fig. 4: Anti-Olympic protest near the Olympic Stadium on the evening of the closing ceremony(Photo courtesy of Felix Lill).

15

Lasting impact of diversity
and inclusion?
In a country where being different is often
associated with disruption and potential
danger, an exaggerated sense of anzen
anshin may also obstruct social inclusionand diversity. The opening and closing
ceremonies, however, gave a stage to people
with disabilities, multinational backgrounds,
and different ages in an unprecedented way.
In a display of gender-balance and racial
awareness, basketball player Hachimura
Rui, whose father is from Benin, carried theJapanese flag at the opening ceremony
together with female wrestler Sasaki Yui.
Moreover, the Olympic flame in the National
Stadium was lit by no other than female
tennis player Osaka Naomi, whose father is
Haitian, and who is a prominent supporterof the Black Lives Matter movement. It is to be
hoped for Japanese society that this spirit ofdiversity and inclusion was not extinguishedtogether with the Olympic flame at the closing
ceremony two weeks later.
Torsten Weber is a historian of modern
East Asia and Principal Researcher at theGerman Institute for Japanese Studies(DIJ Tokyo), Japan. He has recently
contributed two chapters on the Tokyo
Olympics 1964 and the Phantom Olympics
1940 to the open-access publication
Japan Through the Lens of the Tokyo
Olympics (Routledge 2020).
Email: weber@dijtokyo.org

Notes
1	
For a critical appraisal of the 1964 Tokyo
Olympics see Shunya Yoshimi, “1964 Tokyo
Olympics as Post-War,” International
Journal of Japanese Sociology, No. 28, 8095; and Christian Tagsold, “The 1964 Tokyo
Olympics as Political Games,” Asia-Pacific
Journal, Vol. 7, Issue 23, No. 3 (2009).
2	
Data according to JX Tsushinsha/Fastalert(covid2019.fa.xwire.jp)
3	
Sally Jenkins, “Japan should cut its losses
and tell the IOC to take its Olympic pillage
somewhere else”, Washington Post,
5 May 2021 (https://www.washingtonpost.
com/sports/2021/05/05/japan-iocolympic-contract)4	
Jules Boykoff, Celebration Capitalism
and the Olympic Games (Routledge 2014).
5	
Sonja Ganseforth, “The difference
between zero and one: Voices from theTokyo anti-Olympic movements”, Japan
Through the Lens of the Tokyo Olympics(Routledge 2020), ed. Barbara Holthus,
Isaac Gagné, Wolfram Manzenreiter,Franz Waldenberger, 110-115.
6	Robin Kietlinski, “Japan in the Olympics,
the Olympics in Japan”, Education about
Asia, Vol. 21, No. 2, 2016, 35-40.
7	
See Sandra Collins, The 1940 Tokyo Games:
The missing Olympics (Routledge 2007).
8	
Torsten Weber, “Tokyo’s 1940 “Phantom
Olympics” in public memory: When Japan
chose war over the Olympics”, Japan
Through the Lens of the Tokyo Olympics(Routledge 2020), 66-72.
9	James Riordan, “Moscow 1980,” in:Encyclopedia of the Modern Olympic
Movement (Greenwood Press 2004), eds.
John E. Findling and Kimberly D. Pelle,
pp. 199-206.
10	Nishimura Karin, “Yamaguchi Kaori JOC
riji ‘Konkai no Gorin wa kiken de anfea na
mono ni naru”, Newsweek Japan (online),
https://www.newsweekjapan.jp/stories/
world/2021/06/72350-jocjoc-ioc-iociociocioc-ioc-iocjoc-joc_2.php (6 August 2021)11	On the originally envisioned economic
impact of the Games see Franz
Waldenberger, “Number games: The
economic impact of Tokyo 2020”, Japan
Through the Lens of the Tokyo Olympics(Routledge 2020), 18-24.
12	
See “Beyond 2020” reports by the
Mitsubishi Research Institute (in Japanese),available online https://www.mri.co.jp/
knowledge/wisdom/legacy/index.html
13	“’We should build back better, even before
crises occur’. Interview with Okada Norio”,
Weltweit vor Ort, No. 2, 2020, 26-28.
14	International COVID-19 statistics
according to Johns Hopkins University(https://coronavirus.jhu.edu).
15	“Presentation by Prime Minister Shinzo
Abe at the 125th Session of theInternational Olympic Committee (IOC)”(Sept. 7, 2013), https://japan.kantei.
go.jp/96_abe/statement/201309/07ioc_
presentation_e.html