Previously, on the Tokyo Olympics

Tokyo 2020 was intended to show how Japan has bounced back from a devastating natural disaster, and the capital’s Olympics in 1964 had a similar theme of recovery. Philip Barker tells the tale of a Games which saw the host nation return to global acceptance after years of war.

The final film made by Hollywood star Cary Grant, Walk, Don’t Run, was set against the backdrop of the Tokyo 1964 Olympics.

Grant’s character, Sir William Rutland, finds that every hotel in the Japanese capital is fully booked because of the extra number of visitors in town for the Games. Because of the ban on overseas spectators, this is not a problem expected at Tokyo 2020.

This year’s Games were intended to be an emblem of hope and rebirth after the earthquake and tsunami which devastated the coast of Japan a decade ago, and Tokyo 1964 had similar symbolic aims.

Japan’s first home Olympics came 16 years after the country was banned from the Games in London in 1948, for their part in the Second World War.

An Olympic preview in World Sports on the eve of the 1964 Games described Japan as a “phoenix risen above the ashes of the atomic bombs - spiritually, economically and socially”.

“Sport will add its accolade to the reacceptance of Japan itself as part of the human race, with the arrival of the tiny flame of Olympia, and the rising of the doves above Tokyo’s National Stadium,” the magazine continued.

Six years earlier, Tokyo played host to the 1958 Asian Games in a new National Stadium which was built with the Olympics in mind.

When the International Olympic Committee gathered in Munich the following year to decide the 1964 host, Tokyo beat Detroit, Vienna and Brussels in the first round of voting.

The Japanese duly set about transforming their city. The stadium itself was enlarged, and new venues including Kenzō Tange’s striking National Gymnasium were built.

Twenty-two main highways were constructed as part of what officials described as “a comprehensive plan for highway and road construction”. The city’s subway system was also extended.

At the time there were few signs in English in the city.

PHILIP BARKER HISTORIAN, INSIDETHEGAMES

“There was one big problem to be solved,” Markus Osterwalder, the curator of a recent Olympic Museum exhibition on Olympic symbols, told insidethegames.

“Japanese is almost unknown outside Japan. Who would be able to read Japanese characters?

“It was vital that visitors should be made to feel at home in this megalopolis of a capital city. How should they communicate? They reduced the shapes and sizes to the minimum needed to understand the message.”

The sporting symbols the organisers created, or pictograms, have been an important part of the Olympics ever since and there was also another major innovation.

In 1962, the first global satellite - Telstar - blasted into space. This meant that for the first time, much of the world was able to watch Olympic events live or, at the very least, on the same day. Coverage was for the most part in black and white and there was a back-up plan to send recordings by air.

The Olympic Flame was flown across Asia in a special aircraft called Spirit of Tokyo. There was drama when it was damaged en-route by a typhoon, but when it finally landed in Okinawa, then still under American administration, it was received with wild enthusiasm.

The Japan Times reported that “tens of thousands of Japanese flags blossomed and shouts of ‘banzai’ echoed everywhere as the Olympic Flame arrived”.

In Kagoshima, 30,000 people gathered to see 18-year-old Ritsuko Takahashi, the first Torchbearer who was a pupil at a local high school.

The Relay was divided into separate routes as it journeyed through Japan, which were reunited once again as they reached Tokyo.

The choice of the final Torchbearer, normally a closely guarded secret, had been announced some months before.

“A youngster symbolising the new Japan should be picked,” organisers insisted. “He should be more than 1.70 metres in height and weigh around 65 kilograms. The runner should be a youth of good character.”

Yoshinori Sakai, a student at Waseda University, “was found to meet all qualifications”.

He was born 55 kilometres north of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, the day the first atomic bomb fell.

It had been agreed that the Games would take place in October. They opened on a sunny autumnal afternoon and the Emperor and his party arrived to “electronic” music.

In his opening speech, IOC President Avery Brundage included words in honorific Japanese to salute the sovereign. "The Olympic Movement, with its 118 National Olympic Committees, has now bridged every ocean, and the Olympic Games at last are here in the Orient, proving that they belong to the entire world,” he continued.

The Olympic flag was raised on a pole precisely 15.21m high, in tribute to the distance leapt by Mikio Oda, the triple jumper who was Japan’s first Olympic champion in 1928.

Above the stadium, pilots from the Blue Impulse aerobatic team drew the Olympic Rings in the sky in a startling set piece. Members of the same team performed a similar display to greet the 2020 Olympic Torch in Matsushima.

In 1964, judo was on the Olympic programme for the first time. When it was proposed, IOC minutes recorded that Japanese member Dr. Ryōtarō Azuma “supports this request and says how gratifying it would be were judo to be included”.

The official Tokyo 1964 report said "it was decided that each contestant would be permitted to participate in only one weight category”.

Tokyo was transformed for the 1964 Olympics as Japan sought international reacceptance. Photo: Getty Images

PHILIP BARKER HISTORIAN, INSIDETHEGAMES

Competition was held at the Budokan hall, built especially for the Games, and Japanese lightweight Takehide Nakatani beat Eric Hänni of Switzerland to become judo’s first Olympic champion.

The host nation also celebrated when Isao Okano won at middleweight and a third gold went to heavyweight Isao Inokuma.

Fifteen-thousand crammed into the arena for the prestigious open final, where Japan’s Akio Kaminaga faced mighty Dutchman Anton Geesink for gold.

The bout lasted nine minutes before victory went to Geesink.

Only men took part in judo at the 1964 Games, and women were not admitted to full Olympic competition until 1992. Tokyo 2020 will have gender equality across the board.

There were 5,137 participants in all sports in 1964, but only 683 were women. Japanese women excelled in another new sport, however. “Volleyball is rooted deep in the life movement of every organisation and community,” organisers said.

Nichibo Kaizuka, a company team from an Osaka spinning factory, supplied the players for the Japanese national team. They were determined to win gold and duly obliged.

Czechoslovakia’s Věra Čáslavská was a star in the gymnastics hall. She returned home with three gold medals and a silver.

In the pool, Australian superstar Dawn Fraser won 100m freestyle gold for the third successive Games, a feat never before achieved.

Only 0.4 seconds behind came 15-year-old American schoolgirl Sharon Stouder, who set a world record in winning 100m butterfly gold. The teenager also won two relay golds, both in world record times. Her team-mates in the 4x100m freestyle included Donna de Varona, the 400m medley champion.

American Don Schollander became the first swimmer to win four gold medals at the same Games. Individual success came in the 100m and 400m freestyle and he anchored two relay teams to gold.

In athletics, Britain’s Mary Rand won medals of all three colours. In the long jump, her leap of 6.76m was a world record which has been recorded forever on a section of pavement in her home town of Wells in Somerset.

The silver medallist was Irena Kirszenstein of Poland who won gold in the 4x100m relay and, under her married name of Szewińska, enjoyed a supreme career which included three titles from five Olympics.

The Tokyo 1964 Games are often thought of as the last of a golden era, but the build-up was fraught with politics.

Apartheid in South Africa had already prompted the IOC to threaten suspension “if the policy of racial discrimination practiced by their Government in this respect does not change”.

At the IOC Session held in January 1964 at the Innsbruck Winter Olympics, the IOC voted that “the invitation to South Africa to compete in Tokyo is withdrawn”.

Negotiations for a united Korean team in Tokyo had also come to nothing. When IOC chancellor Otto Mayer stood down from his role shortly before the Games, he reflected sadly: “My final wish is that politics should not be allowed to interfere with sport.”

Another political dilemma also came to a head in the months before the Games. Indonesian President Sukarno had enthusiastically hosted the 1962 Asian Games but refused visas to Israeli and Taiwanese athletes. It put his nation at odds with the IOC and the International Amateur Athletic Federation, which both imposed bans.

Sukarno retaliated by staging the Games of New Emerging Forces in 1963, but once again Israel and Taiwan were excluded.

Brundage saw the GANEFO as “politically inspired” and those who participated were threatened with Olympic bans.

His stance was supported by the Marquess of Exeter, the IOC vice-president and the head of the IAAF.

Indonesians were banned from Tokyo and so were six North Koreans, including world record breaking middle-distance runner Sin Kim-dan.

At the GANEFO she won the 400m in 51.04sec and the 800m in 1min 59.01sec, but neither was ratified as a world record. Considered a gold medal favourite, she arrived at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport and was turned away.

In protest at her exclusion, the North Koreans withdrew their entire team. In the following days, Australia’s Betty Cuthbert won 400m gold in 52.00 and Britain’s Ann Packer won the 800m in 2:01.01. Both times were slower than Sin’s best.

Although medal tables were and are expressly forbidden by the Olympic Charter, there was still a fierce rivalry between the United States and Soviet Union.

Joe Frazier beat Vadim Yemelyanov in the semi-final on his way to the heavyweight boxing title, but Soviets did claim gold in three other weight divisions.

Frazier’s compatriot Al Oerter defied a painful rib injury to win a third successive discus title.

Barely a month before the Games, Ethiopia’s Abebe Bikila underwent an operation for appendicitis but became the first man to win successive Olympic marathon gold medals.

Tunisia’s Mohammed Gammoudi foreshadowed the rise of North African runners with 10,000m silver. The gold medallist was native American Billy Mills who clearly did not expect to win.

“I’m flabbergasted,” he said. “I cannot believe it.”

Durward Knowles, competing in his fifth Games, secured a first gold medal for The Bahamas with Cecil Cooke in the star class but the veteran was competing in a changing world, as one episode neatly reflected.

At the Opening Ceremony, marathon runner Trevor Haynes carried the flag of Northern Rhodesia but, by the end of the Games, the flag of newly independent Zambia was seen to mark the country’s independence.

The Closing Ceremony was brought to an end by a farewell chorus of Auld Lang Syne and the official report noted “a feeling of deep emotion with the completion of the Games”. On the scoreboard a message read: “Sayonara! We meet again in Mexico City in 1968.”

Joe Frazier sends Vadim Yemelyanov to the canvas amid American and

Russian boxing rivalry. Photo: Getty Images

Yoshinori Sakai, born on the day the first atomic bomb fell, climbs

a staircase to light the Olympic Flame. Photo: Getty Images