International Journal of Japanese Sociology Special Issue: ‘Olympic Games in Japan and East Asia: Images and Legacies’
Tomoko Tamari and Mike Featherstone co-edited the special issue on ‘The Olympic Games in Japan and East Asia: Images and Legacies’ for the International journal of Japanese Sociology in March 2019. This special issue was one of the outcomes of International conference on ‘London, Rio, Tokyo Olympics’, held at Goldsmiths in June 2017 (collaborative with CUCR in Department of Sociology Goldsmiths, founded by Japan Foundation and Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation).
The International Journal of Japanese Sociology is the official Journal of The Japan Sociological Society, which is a nationwide academic organisation for sociologists in Japan which aims to encourage sociological research and to promote its advancement and spread. Current membership exceeds 3,000 members, and the organisation’s activities include holding general meetings and publishing the society journal.
International Journal of Japanese Sociology
Volume 28, Issue 1, March 2019
‘The Olympic Games in Japan and East Asia: Images and Legacies’
Mega sporting events, such as the Olympic games have become especially notable though exhaustive media coverage, dramatic competition and staged the festive atmosphere. Such spectacular global mega-events are increasingly understood in terms of the logic of modern consumer capitalist society along with nationalism and nation branding. More recently they echo our concern about environmentalism and pursuit of elitism in sport and social life. The Olympic games can in particular be seen as a site to exemplify the complex processes of the interconnectedness between the values of culture and contested political and economic interests. Thus, the Olympics Games attract a wide range of agents with different interests and agendas. On the one hand, the games are often used as an opportunity to demonstrate the host nation/city’s political, economic and cultural prestige to the world, not only by constructing new infrastructures, event-related facilities and iconic architecture, but also by recreating cultural heritage narratives and reinventing the imaginary of the host nation. On the other hand, this has led to the need to examine the negative effects of urban gentrification, the displacements and exclusions of local population. In addition, it raises a range of political issues around the national legacies and environmental issues of sustainability in the Olympic sites. (The issue around the New National Stadium for the 2020 Olympics in the Meiji Park is a good example.) Hence, the Olympics Games, then provide a great opportunity to investigate these transformations and open-up a broader range of important questions.
Contents
Olympic Games in Japan and East Asia: Images and Legacies: An Introduction
Mike Featherstone, Tomoko Tamari
Olympic Films and Public Memory
Takeshi Nakaji
Lukewarm Nationalism: The 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Social Media and Affective Communities
Yoshitaka Mōri
Star Architects, Urban Spectacles, and Global Brands: Exploring the Case of the Tokyo Olympics 2020
Tomoko Tamari
Making Heterogeneous Space: Land Development & the Proletarianization of Urban Underclass in Post War Japan
Tsutomu Tomotsune
1964 Tokyo Olympics as Post‐War
Shunya Yoshimi
Global and Local Intersection of the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics
Myungkoo Kang, Haeyeon Kim
On the Olympic Games: An Afterword
John Horne