Japan Through the Lens of the Tokyo Olympics Open Access

This book situates the 2020 Tokyo Olympics within the social, economic, and political challenges facing contemporary Japan.
Using the 2020 Tokyo Olympics as a lens into the city and the country as a whole, the stellar line up of contributors offer hidden insights and new perspectives on the Games. These include city planning, cultural politics, financial issues, language use, security, education, volunteerism, and construction work. The chapters then go on to explore the many stakeholders, institutions, citizens, interest groups, and protest groups involved, and feature the struggle over Tokyo's extreme summer heat, food standards, the implementation of diversity around disabilities, sexual minorities, and technological innovations. Giving short glimpses into the new Olympic sports, this book also analyses the role of these sports in Japanese society.
Japan Through the Lens of the Tokyo Olympics will be of huge interest to anyone attending the Olympic Games in Tokyo 2020. It will also be useful to students and scholars of the Olympics and the sociology of sport, as well as Japanese culture and society.

Barbara Holthus, Ph.D., is a sociologist and deputy director of the German Institute for Japanese Studies, Tokyo, Japan. Her main research interests include marriage and the family, childcare, happiness and well-being, media, as well as demographic change. Publications include Life Course, Happiness and Well-being in Japan (2017, Routledge, ed. with W. Manzenreiter). Isaac Gagné, Ph.D., a cultural anthropologist, is a senior research fellow at the German Institute for Japanese Studies, Tokyo, Japan and managing editor of Contemporary Japan. He is a cultural anthropologist working on mental health and social welfare, morality and ethics, and religion. Publications include "Religious globalization and reflexive secularization in a Japanese new religion" (2017, Japan Review). Wolfram Manzenreiter is professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Vienna, Austria. His research is concerned with social and anthropological aspects of sports, emotions, rural Japan, and transnational networks of the Japanese diaspora. Publications include Sport and Body Politics in Japan (2014, Routledge). Franz Waldenberger is an economist and director of the German Institute for Japanese Studies, Tokyo, Japan. His research focuses on the Japanese Economy in comparative perspective. Recent publications include "Society 5.0. Japanese Ambitions and Initiatives" in The Digital Future (2018, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung).

1. Understanding Japan through the lens of Tokyo 2020  2. Olympics and the media  3. Skateboarding: "F*** the Olympics"  4. Political games  5. Number games: The economic impact of Tokyo 2020  6. Climbing: New sport on the block  7. Advertising the Games: Sponsoring a new era  8. Karate: Bowing to the Olympics in style  9. Herculean efforts: What the construction of the Olympic Stadium reveals about working conditions in Japan  10. Tokyo 2020 and neighborhood transformation: Reworking the entrepreneurial city  11. Ho(s)t city: Tokyo's fight against the summer heat  12. Tokyo's architecture and urban structure: Change in an ever-changing city  13. Success story: The 1964 Tokyo Olympics  14. San'ya 2020: From building to hosting the Tokyo Olympics  15. Baseball/softball: One more homer for Japan  16. Outdoor sports in the periphery: Far from the compact games  17. Surfing: Taken with a grain of salt  18. Tokyo's 1940 "Phantom Olympics" in public memory: When Japan chose war over the Olympics  19. Upgrading Tokyo's linguistic infrastructure for the 2020 Games  20. Sexual minorities and the Olympics  21. The Paralympic Games: Enabling sports and empowering disability  22. Sex in the city  23. Games of Romance? Tokyo in search of love and Unity in Diversity  24. The 2020 Olympic mascot characters: Japan wants to make a difference  25. Olympic education: How Tokyo 2020 shapes body and mind in Japan  26. Sex in the Village  27. Volunteering Japan-style: "Field cast" for the Tokyo Olympics  28. The difference between zero and one: Voices from the Tokyo anti-Olympic movements  29. Beyond 2020: Post-Olympic pessimism in Japanese cinema  30. Tokyo 2020 from the regional sidelines  31. Olympic leverages: The struggle for sustainable food standards  32. Security for the Tokyo Olympics  33. The Olympic and Paralympic Games as a technology showcase  34. Tokyo 2020: Connecting the past with the future