Theres a sinking feeling in Japan about the run-up to the 2020

Tokyo Olympics. The city ditched its overly expensive centerpiece

a $2 billion stadium and the official logo, under allegations of
plagiarism. The preparations have been plagued by embarrassing
cost overruns, ineffective leadership, finger pointing at all levels,
and widespread doubts that a seemingly inept Japanese government
will have everything ready in time.
This might be par for the course as far as recent games go, certainly
in relation to budget overruns: Every single Olympic Games between
1960 and 2012 for which there are reliable data (roughly 60
percent) exceeded its budget by an average of 179 percent. And
though the 1976 Montreal Olympic Committee began confidently
Montreals mayor, Jean Drapeau, even proclaimed, The Olympics
can no more lose money than a man can have a baby they
finished nearly eight times over budget. The price tag for the most
recent Olympics, in Sochi, Russia, may have been an obscene $66.7
billion more than five times over budget and surpassing Beijings
2008 Olympics as the most expensive games ever. No wonder no
developed democratic country wants to host the 2022 Winter
Olympics.
But Japanese may take some comfort in knowing that Tokyo has
already waded through these same problems before, in the run-up
to the 1964 Olympics which went on to be regarded as perhaps
the most successful of all time. Indeed, it was these earlier games
that galvanized Tokyo to accomplish one of the greatest urban
transformations of modern times and opened the door for Japan to
re-enter the world stage. However, although the 1964 games
exceeded expectations, it left troubling legacies that seem to have
been forgotten and are on the verge of being repeated.
There can scarcely be a starker contrast with modern-day Tokyo, one
of the most technologically sophisticated and efficient cities in the
world, than Tokyo pre-1964, a war-scarred, dilapidated, diseased,
and polluted third-world megalopolis. The harbor and the capitals
main rivers were thick with sludge from human and industrial waste.
Only roughly 25 percent of the citys residents enjoyed the luxury of
a flush toilet; the rest were serviced by ubiquitous vacuum trucks
that collected feces from under the toilets in Japanese homes and
transported them to rice paddies for use as fertilizer. (During the
U.S. occupation of Japan following World War II, American troops
sarcastically nicknamed them honey trucks because of the
powerful odor they emitted.) Hot water was infrequent, roads poor,
modern hotel rooms scarce, and English speakers so rare that the
children of foreign residents were recruited to teach conversation
classes.
People wondered why the International Olympic Committee (IOC)

had even voted, in 1959, for Tokyo over the far more modern cities
of Detroit, Brussels, and Vienna. The answer was an intense
lobbying effort, complete with high-class call girls (according to
Olympics historian Andrew Jennings) and a pledge to remake the
chaotic city in the image of a modern organized metropolis.
Tokyos 2020 bid relied less on wooing the IOC with prostitutes and
promised transformation, and more on garnering Japanese interest.
While Tokyos bid for the 2016 Olympics failed in part because it did
not have widespread public support one 2009 poll showed only
56 percent, the lowest among the four candidate cities the
Japanese public rallied in the wake of the March 2011 triple disaster
of a tsunami, earthquake, and nuclear accident. By March 2013, an
estimated 70 percent of Japanese favored hosting the games in
2020.
Unlike the 1964 Games, the IOC saw Tokyo as a safe bet for 2020
compared to the other two final candidates: during the final round of
voting in 2013, Istanbul was in the throes of large anti-government
protests, and Madrid indeed, most of Spain was in the middle
of its great recession. (Money may have played a role: In midJanuary, allegations of Tokyo bribing an IOC member emerged.)
Tokyos proposed budget of around $8 billion modest compared to
Sochis was mostly earmarked for simply updating aging
infrastructure.
The scenario could not have been further from Tokyos proposal for
the 1964 Games, which involved nothing less than rebuilding an
entire city. Plans in early 1959 to redo Tokyos urban infrastructure
included calls to construct 10,000 new office and residential
buildings, 22 highways and overhead expressways, a $55 million
monorail from the airport into downtown Tokyo, 25 miles of new
subway lines more than doubling the existing total length at the
time and a $1 billion bullet train that would halve the existing
travel time between Tokyo and Osaka (part of the Olympic budget,
even though there were no planned events in Osaka).
And then there was the need to build five-star hotels for the
expected hordes of tourists; Olympic Village dormitories for the
7,000 expected athletes; architect Kenzo Tanges distinctively
upward-sweeping Yoyogi National Stadium; and the Budokan Hall
designed for martial arts competitions, which later become famous
as a music venue for the likes of Bob Dylan and Ozzy Osbourne. And
last but not least was the construction of new sewers, allowing
excrement to be flushed rather than scooped. By 1962, Tokyo had
become one gargantuan construction site, operating 24/7.
The 1964 Games were buoyed by a massive government plan to
double gross national product by the end of the 1960s through the

manufacture and export of transistors, radios, television sets, and

automobiles. But today, instead of being a key component of Prime
Minister Shinzo Abes economic plan, known as Abenomics, the
2020 Olympics preparations have instead begun to undermine the
governments image. Dropping the official logo for the Olympic
Games in September 2015 after a plagiarism controversy was not
nearly as damaging as ditching the new national stadiums original
design in July. The stadiums snowballing expense it morphed
from the original estimate of $1.3 billion to $2.1 billion and jokefueling shape (likened to a toilet seat, UFO, vacuum-cleaning robot,
bicycle helmet, and more) sealed its fate. The original stadium,
designed by renowned architect Zaha Hadid, was so large that it
threatened to dwarf the quiet surroundings of Meiji Jingu forest,
considered a sacred sanctuary by many Tokyoites. But it was the
price tag that caused the loudest public outcry in this heavily
indebted country, leading to the resignation of Hakubun Shimomura,
Abes handpicked sports minister and political ally.
The Japan Sports Agency, one of several organs involved in staging
the Olympics including the Japanese Olympic Committee (JOC),
the ministry in charge of sports, and the Tokyo governors office
had chosen the Hadid stadium design in November 2012 from
among 46 submissions, without ever considering costs, thinking that
was the purview of other agencies. No less a personage than JOC
head and former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori quickly called a press
conference after Abes decision to seek a new design, to make it
clear that the fiasco was not his fault and that he had been
against the project in the first place. We are just a possible user of
the stadium, he said. It is the central government that is
responsible for the construction of the facility. People believe I am
responsible for the plan. I am very annoyed about that.
In December, Tokyo selected a scaled down, more conservative, and
less expensive stadium design but at $1.26 billion it will still be
one of the worlds most expensive, and many worry that it wont be
ready in time. Recent history does not provide much comfort for
coming in on budget either; this is worrying for a country struggling
with a huge national debt. The 2012 Olympics in London spent five
times its bid; the 2004 Olympics in Athens, a whopping 16 times its
bid, according to one estimate an act of financial
mismanagement that contributed to bankrupting Greece several
years later.
And yet, the outlook for 2020 cannot yet be considered dire if the
1964 Games preparations are anything to go by. In the years leading
up to the games, Tokyo continued to stumble over every deadline
for road construction. And it was a mere year and a half before the
games began that somebody could be persuaded to head the
Olympic Organizing Committee. At the rate preparations are

moving, we must be gravely concerned, the Tokyo newspaper

Mainichi Shimbun noted in 1963.
One looming question was where the 30,000 expected tourists
would rest their heads, as there were only half the required number
of hotel beds. And bigger still was the issue of how to handle the
anomalous severe water shortage in Tokyo that year. As the summer
of 1964 began, the municipal government instituted water rationing.
So severely did Tokyoites feel the water shortage that even soba
shops cut down their cooking. Planes seeded clouds, rivers were
rerouted, artesian wells dug, and Shinto priests performed rain
dances, all in an attempt to quench the citys thirst.
As the games approached, construction rose to a frenzied pitch.
Tokyo residents put up black curtains to shut out the blinding allnight work lights and climbed into their futons wearing ear plugs to
block out the incessant noise of the pile drivers and bulldozers. Just
a few weeks before the games began, the clanging and the tumult
gradually faded away, and New Tokyo, with its long, smooth
stretches of highways, began to appear.
The placement of the Olympic Village in Yoyogi Park was symbolic
for the Japanese. That land had previously been the site of a
barracks and parade ground for the Japanese Imperial Army, and
was then occupied by U.S. military families once the war ended. As
of 1964, there were tens of thousands of American soldiers still
stationed on Japanese soil under the U.S.-Japan mutual security
treaty a state of affairs that many Japanese found unsettling. Leftand right-wing groups viewed the 1964 return of the Yoyogi Park
land to Tokyo as the central site for the Olympics as an especially
welcome gift by both, who longed for the day when all the
Americans would pack up and go home.
Less than 10 days before the Olympics began, the crowning glory of
the Olympic effort (that had nothing to do with the games) the
Japanese bullet train finally started operations between Tokyo and
Osaka. The Shinkansen reached peak speeds of 130 miles per hour,
making them the fastest trains in the world, and were so punctual
that people could set their watches by them.
Haneda Airport, where the Olympic visitors would land, was
refurbished into a gleaming showpiece and a futuristic monorail
would whisk them into town.
But not quite everything was finished. Only two of the eight main
expressways were fully completed, with two more only partially
constructed. Bedrooms and public restrooms, still too few in
number, were made up for in part with floating hotels parked in
Tokyo Bay and a fleet of mobile public toilets. Etiquette training was

also ongoing. Subway signs around the time of the Olympics read,
Lets refrain from urinating in public and Do not go to new
Haneda Airport in pajamas and haramaki, and still another,
addressed to young females, went, Do not mistake foreign mens
kindnesses as an expression of love.
The games opened on Oct. 10, 1964, under a sky so blue it looked
like it would crack. Pilots created five majestic Olympic rings in the
sky. Yoshinori Sakai, born in Hiroshima on the day the atomic bomb
was dropped, carried the torch up the stairs to light the Olympic
flame; Emperor Hirohito stood erect as teams from 93 nations
marched in. I dont think I ever saw the emperor being the only
person standing before that, said then Chicago Tribune
correspondent Sam Jameson. I imagined in my mind that he was
thanking the world for readmitting Japan into international society.
The games were responsible for the highest-rated sports program in
the history of Japanese television. An estimated more than nine out
of every 10 people in Japan witnessed the stunning upset as the
petite Japanese Eastern Sorceresses beat the towering Russian
womens volleyball team for the gold medal. When it was over, Life
Magazine raved that the Games were the greatest Olympics ever
held, not only for the excitement and the sporting achievements,
but also the hosts level of preparation an evaluation that is
perhaps still true.
Less than two decades after being crushed militarily and stripped of
its imperialist aspirations, the Olympics gave the Japanese the sense
that they could once again stand proud. The world had just been
introduced to a new Japan, a peaceful democracy that would soon
become an economic power.
For Tokyoites, the Olympic success was doubly important because
their city had been transformed from a struggling backwater into a
shiny international metropolis pulsing with new glamour. Indeed, as
if to confirm its new status to the world, Tokyo was selected shortly
afterwards to be the chic location for what would become among
the most famous James Bond movies, You Only Live Twice.
Of course, there were downsides to the games, though they
attracted little attention at the time. First, there was the cost, which
amounted to an estimated $2.8 billion in 1964 dollars. Readying the
Tokyo-Osaka high-speed train in time for the games was purely for
show, since no Olympic events were held in Japans second-largest
city: With the worlds eyes turned towards the Tokyo Olympics, Japan
wanted to show off the technological heights it had attained. The
rush to get the train ready in time for the Olympics caused
construction costs and land acquisition fees to balloon, nearly
doubling expenses to $1 billion.

To complete construction of the Shinkansen, funds were sucked

away from other projects like the monorail that was meant to
connect Haneda Airport and the city center. Instead of terminating
at a more convenient location, like Tokyo Station or Shimbashi, it
ended several stops short, in Hamamatsucho. The project lacked the
funds to buy the necessary land; instead, they built it over publicly
owned waterways to cut costs, destroying local fishing industries in
the process.
Highway construction was similarly affected. Expressways were built
above canals and rivers to avoid buying land the prices of which,
not surprisingly, had risen dramatically because owners knew the
government wanted it for the impending games. An eyesore
emblematic of this situation is the expressway directly above the
historic bridge at Nihonbashi, an economic center at the end of the
old Tokaido Road footpath. The arrangement helped destroy a
vibrant river culture that carried goods and supported numerous
shops and restaurants.
Corruption, in the form of bid rigging and price collusion, a wellknown fact of life in postwar construction in Japan, also reared its
ugly head during the pre-Olympic years, as did ample opportunities
to reward the Tokyo underworld. The yakuza availed themselves of
diverse opportunities, ranging from a share of construction contracts
to traffic control, and from lodging to on-site security. They also
enjoyed a monopoly of brothels, gambling dens, and other such offsite entertainments. With taxpayer money siphoned off to line the
pockets of corrupt politicians and underworld bosses, the
subsequent cost-cutting often resulted in shoddy work.
In exchange for the limelight in 2020, Tokyo is once again paying
dearly. There is the cost, estimated to exceed $15 billion far
higher than the original budget, and a figure that will surely rise if
the 2020 Games, as expected, follow the pattern of Olympics before
them. Citizens, already having to cope with an increase in the
shohizei, or consumption tax, from 5 percent to 8 percent in 2014
(and possibly to 10 percent between now and 2017), will have to
face even higher taxes to pay for the games. With Japan facing a
crippling national debt of nearly $11 trillion, approximately 245
percent of GDP, the 2020 Olympics could be a hard burden to bear if
costs start to spiral out of control.
The decision to hold the games in late July and early August, when
the temperature can reach the high 90s and the humidity above 80
percent, is also problematic. The brutal summer weather in the
capital is the reason why the JOC moved the 1964 Olympic start
date to October and prompted Mexico City to follow suit in 1968.
Playing competitive sports at those temperatures is extremely risky
for athletes, especially marathoners. Of course, Tokyo had to bow to

the demands of global TV, the rights being held by NBC, which does
not want to compete with Major League Baseball playoffs and the
National Football League season both of which will be in full swing
in October. But was it really necessary for the JOC bid document
submitted in 2013 to maintain ingeniously that mid-summer
weather in Tokyo is mild and sunny and an ideal climate for
athletes to perform at their best?
Yes, in many ways, Tokyo is an ideal place to hold the 2020
Olympics. Transportation runs like clockwork. It has a newly minted,
awe-inspiring metropolitan skyline the view from the Rainbow
Bridge in Tokyo Bay looking over the city is one of the most stunning
in the world. Moreover, the streets are extremely clean and safe for
a metropolis of its size. Tokyoites in general are kind certainly in
comparison with New Yorkers and Parisians. Lose your way and
someone will step forward to help. Forget your wallet and cell phone
in a taxi or on the train? It will somehow make its way back to your
hotel room. And unlike some other host cities, cleaning up crime and
corruption before the games wont pose a big problem for Tokyo.
But there are also myriad ways that Tokyo lags behind other
developed cities like the low number of licensed tour guides,
competent interpreters, and English speakers. Or the paucity of
bank ATMs that are programmed to take foreign credit cards. The
inability to deal with the ubiquitous Nigerian touts. The lack of free
Wi-Fi hotspots, a cell phone network that is mostly incompatible with
the rest of the world, or barrier-free zones for disabled visitors.
The Tokyo municipal government used painfully tangled
bureaucratic-speak to deal with the latter issue, saying it plans to
make a policy to establish a conference group in conjunction with
city railways to study what needs to be done to make navigating
the city easier for wheelchair users. If thats an example of speedy
municipal problem-solving, the next few years could be a trying
experience.