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can go on konjo, or fighting spirit, alone. The lopsided win by the big blond foreigner was a bitter disappointment for millions of Japanese fans. It was doubly painful because Geesink had humiliated his Japanese opponent in front of the entire planet, via satellite television. I could see that pain firsthand when I watched the match, standing in front of a big TV on display in the show window of an electronics store on the Ginza. Around me was a large crowd of grim-faced Japanese men in suits, some of whom looked to me to be on the verge of tears.

      Author and Japanologist Ian Buruma would later write in a memorable essay:

      Sports, like sex, cuts where it hurts the most, that soft spot where national virility is at stake. And at no time was it more delicate than in the 1960’s, when the nation was beginning to crawl away from the shame of the greatest humiliation of all: defeat in war and subsequent occupation by a superior foreign power. The Tokyo Olympics were supposed to have put the seal on all that. The revival of national virility, already boosted by the accelerating economic boom, was at hand, the Judo Open Weight gold medal was meant to have clinched it: the shame of defeat would be wiped out and Japanese face would finally have been restored…. [But instead it] was as though the ancestral Sun Goddess had been raped in public by a gang of alien demons.

Still, unlike some victorious American athletes whose effusive celebrations knew no bounds, Geesink had shown restraint and respect to Japan in his triumph. He had bowed to Kaminaga after the match, as was required by judo form, and had behaved in a dignified manner throughout. With a gesture of his hand, he had stopped his jubilant coach and teammates from running onto the sacred mat. The moment was captured in national newspaper headlines and has never been forgotten by the Japanese.

      Unfortunately, in his later years he moved to Japan to become a professional wrestler and did much damage to his image not only because of the tergiversation but also because of his surprising inability to perform in his new sport. Said Giant Baba, owner of the All Japan Pro Wrestling association to which Geesink belonged, “With a judogi on, there was nobody better. In wrestling trunks there was nobody worse.”

      It was left to the maniacally trained and wonderfully adept Japan national women’s volleyball team to salvage the nation’s pride. Their gold medal victory over the taller, stronger Soviet Russian squad on the final evening of competition at the four-thousand-seat Komazawa Olympic Park Gymnasium would set television viewing records.

      According to Video Research, 66.8% of all TV-owning households in Japan were tuned in to the match from the beginning, making it the second-most-watched television program in Japanese history—a position it still holds today (first is an NHK New Year’s Eve songfest). As the final point was scored the rating had gone up to 95%. (This raises the question of what the other 5% were watching.)

The “Witches of the Orient,” as a Russian newspaper dubbed them, would go on to become a metonymy for the Games and the subject for a raft of academic treatises spanning the next fifty years. Their bruising eleven-hour-a-day practice regimen over a period of two years was seen to symbolize the dogged resurgence of the Japanese economy, short on resources but full of fighting spirit. Their gold medal victory would go down in Japanese sporting lore as one of the Top Ten great sporting achievements of the 20th century, reaching #5 on a list compiled by the Asahi Shimbun at the end of 1999.

      ***

      The Olympics were a resounding success, making, in just about everyone’s opinion, the madness of reengineering an entire city worthwhile. Japan had originally been designated as host of the 1940 Olympics, but when war appeared on the horizon, the event was canceled. Now, after twenty-four years of catastrophic events, Tokyo came to host the first Olympic games in Asia, and all sorts of records were set. They were the first Games in Olympic history that used computers to keep results, introducing new electronic timing devices, variations of which are still in use today. Innovations included a new timing system for swimming that started the clock by the sound of the starter’s pistol and stopped it with touchpads, and a photo finish using an image with lines on it to determine the sprint results. Such advances thrust Japan into the forefront of global technological development, literally overnight.

      The Olympics put the Seiko Watch company, the official timekeeper of the Games and owner of the iconic Hattori Building in Ginza 4-chome with the famous clock on top, on the map. Moreover, a major Hollywood film, the Cary Grant movie Walk Don’t Run, would be set in Tokyo during this time.

I could not get tickets to any of the glamor events but did manage to see a soccer game between Iran and Romania. I remember that the stadium was packed and very enthusiastic, although few in the stands had any serious rooting interest in either team. But just being in Tokyo and soaking up the atmosphere was enough. It was impossible to walk into any coffee shop, restaurant, or bar without finding a new TV set tuned to the NHK telecast of the Games. More than once, I was taken for an Olympic athlete and asked which event I was participating in. “Beer drinking” was my stock answer. (Evidently, I had still not fully processed Harry’s warning about the use of irony.)

      When it was over, Life magazine, citing the emotion-filled opening ceremony, the high quality of competition, and the pervading goodwill, called the 1964 Games “the greatest ever.” Sports Illustrated noted that, to the very end, Japanese kept their manners toward their foreign guests. During the two weeks 194 pickpockets were arrested in Tokyo, but only 4 in the Olympic area had copped a foreign wallet.

      For the Japanese, all of this was a source of pride. A new Japan had just been introduced to the world, and it was nothing like the old. No longer a militarist pariah shattered by war, it had successfully reinvented itself as a peaceful democracy on its way to becoming a world economic powerhouse. The Games had demonstrated to the West that Japan was now their equal and was going to be a force to be reckoned with. The emperor, the flag of the Rising Sun, the unofficial anthem “Kimigayo,” and the use of Japanese soldiers (even if they were now members of the so-called Self-Defense Forces), once symbols of the menace Japan had posed to its Asia-Pacific neighbors, now stood forth in an entirely different and far more salubrious light.

      That this had been accomplished in a mere two decades served as an example to other countries in Asia and the developing world seeking to modernize their own societies. For the citizens of Tokyo, the Olympic success was doubly important because their city had now been transformed into a shiny international metropolis that would be a magnet for foreign tourists, businessmen, scholars, and others.

Indeed, as if to put the final stamp of approval on the place, the most popular franchise in screen history would choose Tokyo the following year as the central location for one of its most famous films, You Only Live Twice, produced in 1966 and released in 1967, becoming a global smash hit. The Hotel Otani would appear as the Osato Chemical and Engineering Co. Building, Tokyo headquarters of the infamous SPECTRE. I was able to watch some of the filming between classes at Sophia, which was ten minutes up the hill. Also featured was the adjoining garden, as well as the Tokyo subway system, the Kuramae Kokugikan sumo hall, and the neon-lit Ginza nightscape. In the film, that keen Japanologist, James Bond, also gave out the secret of the precise temperature to which sake had to be warmed to please the demanding palate.

      You Only Live Twice, filmed in Tokyo in 1966, was a huge global hit. The Hotel New Otani management gave the 007 crew carte blanche to shoot in their five-star hotel. They were deeply disappointed to hear 007 respond to a question by a SPECTRE operative in the film—“Where are you staying in Tokyo, Mr. Bond?”—by saying, “The Hilton.”

Dark Side of the Olympics

If for the citizens of Tokyo the Olympiad was a blaze of glory, it also cast some shadows. The transformation of the metropolis from a war-ravaged city into a major international capital, seemingly overnight, had a dark side that was rarely talked about. The Games were in fact responsible for a great deal of environmental destruction and human misery in the city and its environs. As one who was there and paid attention to what was going on, I can attest to that.

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