Olympic Japan: Ideals and Realities of (Inter)Nationalism

The city of Tôkyô announced its bid to host the Summer Olympics of 2016 in September 2005. If Tôkyô would be chosen as the hosting city, it would be the first Asian city to host the Games twice. What makes the bid of Tôkyô especially controversial is the personage of Ishihara Shintarô as the driving force behind the city's bid. Ishihara, governor of Tôkyô since 1999, is known as a nationalist politician who is frequently criticized for his historical revisionism, anti-Americanism, racism, and sexism in foreign as well as in the Japanese media. Why, then, is a nationalist politician supporting the Olympic Games that are generally seen as a symbol of international friendship and peace? The nine articles in "Olympic Japan", written by established authors in the field of Japanese sport history, focus on the question "How the Olympic Games are used to (re)construct and to strengthen a collective (national) identity?" The construction of Japan's national identity through the Olympics was and is based on positively associating Japanese cultural and national assets with the Olympic ideals of internationalism and peace. But during this process of harmonization and integration, the Olympic values are to a certain degree reinterpreted, transformed, and acculturated according to Japanese values and needs. One striking example is in 1964 when the Japanese Self-Defense Forces, which played an important role in organizing the Tôkyô Games, were successfully connected to the Olympic ideal of peace and thus - despite violating the Japanese Constitution through their mere existence - gained high acceptance among the Japanese people, a majority of whom had opposed the re-building of a military in Japan until that point. The authors show that Japan provides an important example of the paradox that the Olympic Games produce significant support for nationalism while at the same time purporting to spread internationalism.