Page 4 n THE ASIAN REPORTER
ASIA / PACIFIC
August 6, 2018
Tokyo’s 1964 Olympics echo through the city’s 2020 games
HISTORY REPEATS. Japanese interpreter
Mariko Nagai holds up the jacket she wore during
the 1964 Tokyo Olympics with a backdrop of Yoyogi
National Stadium in Tokyo, which symbolized Japan’s
revival just 19 years after World War II. The stadium
hosted swimming in 1964 and will host handball in
2020. Nagai was a university student from northern
Japan who landed a job as an interpreter at the daz-
zling swimming venue, where American Don Schollan-
der would win four gold medals. (AP Photo/Koji
Ueda)
By Stephen Wade
AP Sports Writer
OKYO — Mariko Nagai walked
outside Yoyogi National Stadium
— the late-architect Kenzo Tange’s
masterpiece from Tokyo’s 1964 Olympics
— and pictured the city in that era.
She was a university student from
northern Japan who landed a job as an
interpreter at the dazzling swimming
venue, where American Don Schollander
would win four gold medals.
“I wouldn’t say Japanese people were
confident about the ability to become one of
the advanced nations,” Nagai said. “But
we wanted to show how much recovery we
had made.”
Tange’s jewel, with a soaring roofline
that still defines modern architecture,
symbolized Japan’s revival just 19 years
after the ravages of World War II. A
centerpiece in ’64, it will host handball in
Tokyo’s 2020 Olympics, a link between the
now and then in the Japanese capital.
In less than two years, the 2020 Games
will hold its opening ceremony. A new
National Stadium is rising on the site of
the demolished one that hosted the
opening in 1964. Tokyo organizers,
though, chose to reuse several older
buildings, partly to cut costs. They include
the Nippon Budokan, the spiritual home of
Japanese judo and other martial arts that
became a well-known rock concert venue
in the ensuing decades.
For Nagai, the theme of recovery also
links now and then. She grew up in Sendai,
a city near the northeast coast that was
devastated by the 2011 earthquake and
tsunami. The 9.0 quake destroyed the
house where she lived until she was 18
years old. No one was living there at the
time, but family treasures were lost or
destroyed.
“Again, this is an opportunity to
showcase to the world how much recovery
we have made,” she said.
Nagai still has her blue Olympic blazer,
T
now faded and minus a breast-pocket
patch that she removed after the games
and has since lost, possibly in the
earthquake rubble. The embroidered
emblem featured Japan’s rising sun, the
Olympic rings, and “TOKYO 1964” etched
across the bottom.
Few foreigners walked Tokyo’s streets
back then, unlike in today’s tourism boom.
Japan had 29 million foreign visitors last
year and expects 40 million in 2020.
“A lot of ordinary people who were not
used to seeing foreigners felt extra-
ordinary that they could be surrounded by
so many non-Japanese,” Nagai said. “It
was something very extraordinary, very
special.”
She was an exception more than 50
years ago, having picked up English as a
high-school exchange student in Dallas.
“In 1964, you could say almost nobody
was able to speak English,” she said. “So
the organizing committee had a very hard
time recruiting interpreters.”
She laughs about it now. The job didn’t
even involve interpreting.
“The text would be handed to me in
English. All I had to do was read it aloud. I
remember that announcing the names was
very difficult,” she said, still able to recall
the tricky pronunciations of some Swedish
swimmers.
Her part-time job as a 21-year-old
announcer turned into a career at Simul
International as one of Japan’s best-
known interpreters. She has worked with
American presidents, British royals, and
Japanese
prime
ministers,
from
Masayoshi Ohira four decades ago to
current leader Shinzo Abe.
Japan has joined the ranks of the world’s
rich nations, but the Yoyogi stadium fits
into 21st-century Tokyo, just as it did in
the 1960s and much in the way a 500-year-
old European cathedral remains timeless.
“That’s the beauty of a classic building,”
said American-born architect James
Lambiasi, who has worked in Tokyo for 25
years. “It does not age. It’s always
wonderful. Remember, Tokyo was a
wooden city recovering from the war, and
these new technologies of steel and
concrete gave the city its rebirth.”
The stadium’s sweeping roof is anchored
to earth by steel cables, like a suspension
bridge, and mixes the modern with tradi-
tional forms found in Japanese temples
and shrines.
Lambiasi, who teaches design at Shi-
baura University and the Japan campus of
Temple University, called the stadium
“the pinnacle of modern architecture.”
He minced few words when talking
about its importance and that of its
designer, Tange, whose tools were slide
rules and his imagination.
“The building is a technological wonder,”
Lambiasi said. “And you have to keep in
mind he did it before any type of computer
graphics, any computer modelling.”
Cutting costs for host cities has become a
priority for the International Olympic
Committee (IOC), which has been
criticized for pressuring them to overspend
on new venues in the past.
John Coates, who heads the IOC’s
planning for Tokyo, acknowledged that
avoiding “white-elephant” venues is a high
priority after the 2016 Games in Rio de
Janeiro, which produced a half-dozen
without tenants or futures.
“These days we are pushing this, and it
seems like they (Tokyo) have had the good
sense to go that way,” Coates told The
Associated Press.
Masa Takaya, a spokesman for Tokyo
2020, said using the older “venues will tell
the worldwide audiences a fantastic
story.”
Besides the Yoyogi stadium, the Nippon
Budokan is the most well-known venue
being used from ’64. A series of Beatles’
concerts in 1966 gave the building its
world fame, probably more so than the
Olympics.
“If you have a favorite band or an album,
I’m sure you have one that’s says ‘Live at
Continued on page 5
MOB KILLING. People look at the carcasses of crocodiles slaughtered by villagers in Sorong, West Papua,
Indonesia. A mob slaughtered hundreds of crocodiles at a breeding ground in retaliation of the death of a 48-
year-old man who was killed by crocodiles after entering the area around the breeding pond. (AP Photo/Irianti)
Indonesian mob kills hundreds of crocodiles after man dies
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — A mob
slaughtered nearly 300 crocodiles at a
breeding ground in Indonesia’s West
Papua province in retaliation for the death
of a local man, according to officials.
A total of 292 crocodiles were killed by
hundreds of villagers following the funeral
of a 48-year-old man who was killed by
crocodiles after entering the area around
the breeding pond, said Basar Manullang,
the head of the local Natural Resources
and Conservation Agency.
The man was believed to have entered
the sanctuary in the Klamalu neighbor-
hood of Sorong district to cut grass for his
cattle.
“Since killing the crocodiles is illegal, we
are coordinating with the police for the
investigation,” Manullang said.
The agency said in a statement that the
villagers were armed with machetes, ham-
mers, shovels, and other sharp weapons.
They killed two large crocodiles of up to 13
feet and many babies measuring 20 to 60
inches.
Witnesses said about 40 policemen came
to the scene, but were too outnumbered to
stop the mob.
Police said about five witnesses were
questioned but no suspects have been
named. The police are encouraging
mediation between the victim’s family and
Mitra Lestari Abadi, the company that
operates the sanctuary.