COVER STORY • Japanese Economy After the Olympic & Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020 • 7Interview with Hiroki Nakamura, JOC Career Academy Program Manager, National Training
Center, Japanese Olympic CommitteeLegacy of the Olympic and Paralympic
Games Tokyo 2020 – the Prominenceof Sport in the Nation’s Life

By Japan SPOTLIGHT
One of the legacies of the Olympic and Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020 is likely to be that sports will
become even more widely popular with people in Japan. Many Japanese, young and old, men and women,
regardless of their profession, may take a greater enjoyment in sports after this memorable occasion. This
will be good for Japan’s aging society, where it will be important to prolong human lifespans and good
health so that elderly people can work longer – and thus help mitigate the labor shortage and maintain thenation’s economic vitality. Furthermore, with the increase in the number of working aged people, thegovernment’s budgetary burden for pensions will decrease and this would contribute to a reduction of the
fiscal debt.
In this regard, it is now an obligation for those aged over 60 to keep in good health by playing sports.
How will the Olympic and Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020 contribute to promoting this concept around thenation?
Japan SPOTLIGHT ’s editor-in-chief Naoyuki Haraoka interviewed Hiroki Nakamura, JOC Career Academy
Program manager of the JOC Sports Academy based at the Ajinomoto National Training Center (NTC).
(Interviewed on Oct. 1, 2019)

Introduction of
Ajinomoto National
Training Center
JS: When I had a chance to see

Olympic athletes practicing at
the NTC early in 2019, I was
deeply impressed by its
excellent facilities. Comparedwith the old days, how do you
think the top-level athletes’
practicing environment haschanged today?

Hiroki Nakamura

Nakamura: I guess there are twoelements to the sports practicing environment, namely, facilities andcoaches. In terms of facilities, the NTC is the first training facility for
top-level athletes in Japan and was opened in 2008. Consisting oftraining facilities indoors and outdoors and lodging facilities, the NTC
is designed to meet the three basic principles for strengthening an
athlete’s performance capacity – “training”, “nutrition” and “rest”.
Also, with the Japan Institute of Sports Sciences (JISS) together with
the NTC, an athlete can have a highly elaborated scientific training.
On July 1, 2019, the NTC Indoor Training Center (East) for athletes
was opened, with a barrier-free environment, and thus our practicing
facilities expanded even further.
https://www.jef.or.jp/journal/

As for coaches for each sport, wehave succeeded in attracting all kindsof top-level coaches. I believe that ourcurrent sports practice environment
has reached its highest ever level. In
addition, “Athnavi” – our supporting
program for job searches for athletesorganized and implemented by the JOC
Career Academy Program – helps themachieve a secure foundation in life toenable them to concentrate onpracticing sports without any concerns
over their income. This is truly anecessity for athletes to achieve a good
performance in their sports.

JS: How is the business environment at this moment

surrounding top athletes searching for jobs?

Nakamura: In 1964 when the last Olympic Games were held inTokyo, many athletes belonging to a sports team owned by acompany were active participants. However, during the two decadesof economic stagnation in Japan after the 1990s, many of thoseJapanese companies were not able to maintain their teams due tofinancial reasons and they were suspended or abolished. Against thisbackground, the JOC Career Academy Program started “Athnavi” inJapan SPOTLIGHT • January / February 2020

31

COVER STORY 72010 and since then, with the concept of one athlete for one
company, we have been working to help athletes find companies
where their sports activities can be supported and sponsored. This
matching system between athletes and companies seems to havebecome socially accepted and is working well. In the past three
years, we have achieved more than 50 matching cases each year.
JS: What do you think are the factors behind thissuccess?

Nakamura: I think this matching system is increasingly
acknowledged by society and the growing interest in the Olympic
and Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020 seems to have worked to raiseawareness of this social acceptability.
JS: The Japanese economy is still stagnant and it

would be difficult to expect Japanese businesscorporations to support athletes. In spite of this, yourmatching project is working well. Is this because theperception that business support for athletes would
lead eventually to their contributing more to societyis spreading?

Nakamura: Yes, there are a number of companies that believe
recruiting athletes will help achieve a sense of cohesion in thecompany as well as raising their employees’ motivation to work
because of enhanced pride in working with top athletes as theircolleagues. By highlighting such positive effects, we are promoting
our matching system among companies and trying to find new ones
prepared to employ athletes. One of the reasons that corporate
sports teams have been abolished since the 1990s was the negative
assessment of their contribution to a company’s sense of cohesionor the employees’ work motivation, which are intangible effects.
Companies have traditionally been more interested in businessprofitability than in such effects. Thus the budgets for corporate
sports teams were significantly cut. But now these intangible effects
are considered more positively and a keen interest in having top
athletes among employees seems to be coming back.
JS: Could you explain a little further about how top

athletes can enhance employees’ work motivation?

Nakamura: An athlete’s colleagues in a company have theopportunity to observe at first hand how he or she practices andperforms, and can be touched and stimulated by their everyday
efforts. This encourages them also to work hard. We have perceived
such a positive impact of one athlete inside a company upon theother employees.
JS: Are there any commonalities among thecompanies recruiting athletes?

Nakamura: Yes, in many cases their owners or executives have a
32 Japan SPOTLIGHT • January / February 2020strong passion for sports. They used to be an athlete in their younger
days and they employ athletes with an understanding of his or her
character or personality. When we started the “Athnavi” program in
2010, we were organizing our presentation events for companies incooperation with the Japan Association of Corporate Executives(Keizai Doyukai) and the Japan Business Federation (Keidanren). At
that time it was large companies that were mostly recruiting athletes.
Later, we began to collaborate with the Chamber of Commerce andthen started to find SMEs wanting to recruit athletes. One example is
Uchida Construction Co., Ltd. in Adachi Ward in Tokyo which
recruited Mariko Morimoto, a triple jump athlete, in 2017. In mymemory, the number of employees of Uchida Construction was then
15. She won first prize in the triple jump for women at the JAAF
Athletics Championships (Japan National Championships) in 2019. I
think it must have been a great joy for her colleagues to see her win
the largest track and field competition in Japan. I heard that all theemployees of the company joined her other supporters in thestadium on a company trip.
JS: In recent years, Paralympic athletes have attracted

growing attention among the public. How do you
support Paralympic athletes in their job searches?

Nakamura: We started supporting them in the “Athnavi” program in
2014. As in the case of the Olympic athletes, they can contribute toraising a sense of cohesion and motivation in a company. Companies
in Japan now are obliged to employ a higher percentage ofhandicapped employees than the legally defined percentage by the
Handicapped Persons Promotion Act. We have heard that companies
would be interested in recruiting Paralympic athletes under this law
requirement.

What Exactly Is “Athnavi”?
JS: Could you tell us how you started the “Athnavi”

program?

Nakamura: The JOC Career Academy Program was founded in 2008
at the same time as the NTC was started. It was originally aimed at
supporting retired athletes stepping into a second career througheducation or training. In starting our program, we had an occasion tohear about athletes’ expectations and found many of them requestingsupport for their professional life as an athlete as well, since they
believed it would be difficult to earn a sufficient salary to enable themto continue with their sports, though admitting the need for support
in developing a second career after retirement. So we started“Athnavi” as a free job search support program, authorized by the
Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. As of October 2019, there
are 191 companies and 297 athletes who have benefitted from theprogram.
JS: How is the “Athnavi” program managed?

COVER STORY 7

achieving win-win relations between a company andan athlete?
Nakamura: You can see how cohesion is created in a company by anathlete by seeing how passionately the athlete’s colleagues arecheering for him or her in the stadium. We also ask companies that
recruited athletes a year or two years ago to make a presentation on
how those athletes are working in their companies in our meetings
on “Athnavi” matching. We also see stadiums, even in minor sports,
filled with these companies’ supporters for the “Athnavi” athletes.
The athletes in these minor sports could attract much more attention
by close communication with their supporters by greeting them andtalking about the performance with them afterwards and also making
a presentation on their sports’ rules or their experiences. This is an
unexpected but very important positive effect, I believe.

Nakamura: What we call the “Athnavi” team consists of me andtemporarily transferred employees from the companies which recruit
athletes. We are working not only to match athletes and companies
but also to achieve win-win relations between the two, wherecompanies can gain a sense of cohesion and enhanced work
motivation among their employees and athletes can continue to dotheir sports and be qualified as a business person contributing tosociety.

Acquiring Business Skills
JS: Athletes have sports-oriented lives, but after they

retire from their companies they may have tocontinue working in business, which could makethem feel anxious. How do you help them acquirebusiness skills?

Nakamura: Athletes today can continue to pursue their sports forlonger than before. They retire on average at around 30-35. In orderto survive subsequently in the business world they have to makepreparations while still performing their sports. So we strongly
recommend that companies let the athletes work on routine businessfor the company instead of treating them as special guests. We arealso organizing meetings to exchange business information forcompanies that recruit athletes. This helps them share knowledge ofmanagement to enhance the business skills of those athletes.
Meanwhile, for the athletes, we are conducting around 100 businesstraining courses for career development each year, including
communication skills or presentation skills, at the NTC.

JS: The legacy of the last Olympic Games in Tokyo

was mainly infrastructure, such as highways or super
express railways. But the coming Olympic andParalympic Games will not have so great a legacy of
hardware infrastructure. Instead, there may simply bemore knowledge of sports among ourselves. Would
this be the legacy of these Games?

Nakamura: Yes, exactly. For example, the Rugby World Cup 2019 inJapan had a significant implication in this regard. With the Japanesenational team’s success in having got through the group stage andreached the quarterfinals, many Japanese now have greater
knowledge about rugby and its rules. It is amazing to see its
popularity growing among the Japanese, though rugby was not wellknown in Japan before then.

What is “Athnavi NEXT”?
JS: While “Athnavi” is a support program for helping

athletes search for a job while they continue to do
sports, “Athnavi NEXT” is a support program for job
searches for retired athletes. Could you tell us how
this program works?

Impact of “Athnavi” Athletes on a Company’s
Business

Nakamura: “Athnavi NEXT” supports the retired athletes in theirtransition after retirement. Some retired athletes cannot imagine
what to do after retirement. In supporting them, we organize
meetings about research on retired athletes’ views on their second
careers, seminars on career design and start-up businesses, andvarious kinds of counselling on careers. We offer them not only job
opportunities but also opportunities to learn or acquire professional
qualifications and encourage them to examine a number of options
for their future career.

JS: You mentioned that the number of athletes

JS: What are the main challenges for your supporting

benefitting from “Athnavi” is increasing. How can wesee more specifically its positive impact in terms ofprograms?

Japan SPOTLIGHT • January / February 2020

33

COVER STORY 7

Nakamura: There are lots of challenges every day. The biggest
challenge for us is how to continue with our programs after thepassion for supporting athletes calms down after Tokyo 2020. Even if
the number of our successful cases in our matching programs
decreases, we would like to continue them as an institution forproviding a public good.
JS: There will be many other Olympic and Paralympic

Games after 2020, and your programs’ impact andimplications will not be lost.

Nakamura: Since 2018, we have been increasingly supporting young
athletes who have just graduated from high-school. They will see
their best time as athletes in Paris 2024 or even in Los Angeles
2028. We see their employer companies understand that they should
continue to support these young athletes for those Olympic andParalympic Games after Tokyo 2020.

Supporting Athletes’ Maturity
JS: Athletes participating in the Olympic andParalympic Games these days are getting younger
and many of them are still early in their teens. Theremay be some who will not reach an appropriate age
to begin a second career after retiring as an athlete.

Social Impact
JS: With promotion of your program for matchingathletes and business, there will be an increasing
number of people interested in sports and a muchwider range of people doing sports by themselves.
Eventually all the nation will be paying greaterattention to health, which would prolong the nation’s
lifespan. People will continue to work longer and thiswould lead to curbing their medical expenditures.
This is a wonderful virtuous cycle.

Nakamura: I am not quite sure if we could have such a wide andin-depth impact upon our society. But I think at least thosecompanies recruiting athletes through “Athnavi” are very positive
about health promotion and physical exercise. We have an example
of a company that has introduced physical exercise for all employees
under the instruction of an employed athlete.
JS: Long lifespan and good health would have an

impact of millions of yen upon public finances. The
increase of “Athnavi” with the slogan of “OneCompany, One Athlete” will have a big impact on ourcountry.

Nakamura: Yes, there may be. The social impact an Olympic andParalympic Games medal winner can have is greater than they think.
If such winners are still very young, it would be necessary for us to
support them in maturing as a person as well as helping them in job
searches.

Nakamura: With the presence of Olympic and Paralympic athletes in
a company, interest in sports will grow. A company today is expected
to fulfill social responsibility by employing a wide diversity of people,
including handicapped persons and athletes. We can say that withsuch diversity, those working for the company would be able toenjoy an affluent working life.

JS: This means that your program must be long-term

Future Ambitions

support to meet each athlete’s needs specifically.

Nakamura: At this moment, the Japan Sports Agency recommends
athletes to have a “dual career” – meaning to have both “a life as ahuman being” and “a life as an athlete” in parallel. I used to work as
a supporter for second careers for players in the J. League (Japan
Professional Football League) before joining the JOC. From mylongtime experience, I am sure that players with the capacity tounderstand well a manager’s instructions or communicate well withthe other players can continue to play longer in the professional
league. Their progress as a human being leads to their highperformance in football. Also, there must be many skills acquired intheir athletic life which would be useful in life after retirement as well.
If they are not aware of this, it would be important to remind them of
it. For example, the PDCA (plan-do-check-act) cycle that an athlete
practices can be applied to business as well, and thus it is an
important basic competency as a working business person.

JS: Finally, could you tell us your future plans or

ambitions on behalf of the JOC Career Academy?

Nakamura: We are lucky to have had positive remarks from thecompanies that have recruited our athletes. With such encouraging
remarks, we are planning to continue our program and improve its
functioning. As of October 2019, we have 1,393 athletes for theSummer Olympic Games and 425 for the Winter Olympic Games
enrolled in special training programs designated by the JOC. For the
Paralympic Games, we have around 200 such athletes. Among thesenumbers, we have so far had 297 athletes successfully matched withcompanies by our program. We would like to raise the ratio of our
success cases as much as possible to expand our “win-win”
relations.

Written with the cooperation of Naoko Sakai who is a freelance writer.

34 Japan SPOTLIGHT • January / February 2020