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How the First Tokyo Olympics Changed the Face of Japan

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How the First Tokyo Olympics Changed the Face of Japan Established 1961 Sport WEDNESDAY, APRIL 14, 2021 How the first Tokyo Olympics changed the face of Japan PARIS: The 1964 summer Olympic Games were go on to win the Pritzker Prize, architecture’s Japan’s great return to the world stage after its Nobel. In a poignant symbolic nod to post-war defeat and destruction two decades earlier in Japan’s pacifist credo, the last carrier of the World War II. The first Games ever held in Asia Olympic torch was Yoshinori Sakai, an athlete were also a chance to trumpet the rebuilding of born on August 6, 1945, the day the atomic bomb post-war Tokyo and the country’s emergence as a was dropped on Hiroshima. high-tech giant with the infrastructure to match. That included the first of its high-speed Television spectacle shinkansen “bullet trains” that would come to Beyond pure sport, the 1964 Olympics were a epitomize modern Japan. “An historic week is chance for the Japanese to show off their techno- beginning for Japan,” AFP wrote six days before logical know-how via television. The opening and the opening ceremony. “Never before has it want- closing ceremonies and several competitions ed to welcome so many foreigners.” were shown in color, with events transmitted by That same desire has been frustrated this time satellite directly to the United States, and record- round by the pandemic which first delayed the ed for Europe. Slow motion was also widely used Games and will now rob them of foreign visitors. for the first time, with ingenious new micro- In 1964, however, the country opened its arms to phones cutting out background noise and the 20,000 spectators, 6,348 foreign athletes, 1,500 marathon broadcast live. officials, 2,000 journalists and some 400 pick- Nine days before the Games opened, Emperor pockets, according to Interpol. Hirohito inaugurated Japan’s first shinkansen train line, which had been under construction for five Architectural gems and a half years. The world’s fastest, it linked To prepare for the influx, Tokyo increased its Tokyo and Osaka at speeds of up to 210 kilome- hotel capacity by half, building a dozen new ters (130 miles) an hour and was heralded as the hotels, including four five-star establishments. In beginning of the “bullet train” era. keeping with the “just in time” industrial philos- ophy that the Japanese would later export to the Tokyo rebuilt world, the construction of the 36 major Olympic Tokyo, the biggest city in the world at the time sites was finished a week before the opening with 10.6 million inhabitants, was completely ceremony. rebuilt for the Games. It was given a vast new They included the Nippon Budokan, built to road network, often raised or underground, pass- TOKYO: A man sits on a rock in front of the Olympic rings at the Odaiba waterfront in Tokyo on Monday. — AFP host the judo competition — the national sport ing under factories and new apartment blocks making its first appearance at the Olympics. The which had replaced old wooden village houses, Olympics,” AFP wrote. “For a year now the face of so, Japan came third in the medals table behind curved roof of the octagonal building, which AFP explained on October 9, the eve of the open- Tokyo has been completely changed.” the mighty Americans and Soviets. stands near the Imperial Palace, was meant to ing ceremony. Ethiopia’s Abebe Bikila also entered the record resemble Mount Fuji, the country’s most iconic New metro lines were built, along with a 27- Judo humiliation books as the first athlete ever to win two Olympic landmark. kilometre-long (17-mile) motorway linking the But while the country bathed in the reflected marathons. The Games also saw the third gold in a Among other emblematic sites built for the Olympic village and the Haneda airport via the glory, on the sporting side it suffered a shocking row for Australian swimmer Dawn Fraser in the occasion were the Yoyogi National Gymnasium by neighborhood of Ginza. “It is the first time a coun- humiliation when its judo champion Akio 100 metres freestyle and three gold medals for the the Japanese architect Kenzo Tange, who would try has made such an effort to organize an Kaminaga lost to Dutchman Anton Geesink. Even Czechoslovak gymnast Vera Caslavska. — AFP .
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