Thread by @observingjapan

After 2877 days, the Tokyo Olympics have finally arrived.

Former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo may not be in attendance, but one way or another, it's hard to imagine Japan's government going to the lengths it has gone without his personal investment, even after his resignation.

It is useful to look at the potent mix of nostalgia, nationalist mythmaking, and economic boosterism that drove his decision to back the Tokyo bid from the earliest days of his administration in January 2013.

The Tokyo bid been had submitted on 7 January. On 1 February 2013, Hashimoto Seiko, former Olympian and LDP upper house member, suggested to the prime minister that hosting the Olympics could help him achieve his vision of first-tier status for Japan.

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Abe's reply was fairly restrained. He replied that he of course supported the bid and reported that he was looking into attending. He had also ordered his cabinet ministers to back the bid.

kokkai.ndl.go.jp/txt/118315254X…

Abe, of course, had waxed nostalgic about the Olympics in the past -- in his book 『美しい国へ』for example -- when he discussed the impression the 1964 Olympics had made on him as a ten-year-old boy. His rhetoric would increasingly resemble his rhetoric in that book.

On 7 February, he spoke in these terms in a lower house budget committee session. Recalling seeing the Olympic rings in the sky over Tokyo in 1964, he explicitly hoped for the 2020 games to serve as a historic milestone in the same as the 1964 games.

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He explicitly says that just as the 1964 Olympics helped serve as a trigger for Japan's economic miracle and boosted national confidence, so too could the 2020 games serve as a "target" for national recovery.

(And also mentions in passing that his grandfather's government had secured the 1964 games for Japan.)

The games are steadily being made part of Abe's program for national revival.

By the start of March 2013, his government's commitment was becoming more apparently. On 1 March, he convened an all-cabinet committee to support the Tokyo bid.

warp.ndl.go.jp/info:ndljp/pid…

At that meeting, Abe referred to the 2020 bid as having "historical significance as the foundation of a new Japan." He called upon his cabinet ministers to all work together "strategically," at home and abroad, in support of the Tokyo bid.

At around the same time, the broader political system was coming around to back the bid. In early March, the Diet passed a resolution calling the government to exert all efforts on behalf of the bid. sangiin.go.jp/japanese/gianj…

And on 4 March, the LDP established its own headquarters supporting the Tokyo bid. jimin.jp/news/policy/12…

4 March was also when Abe greeted the IOC's evaluation committee, in Tokyo to review the Tokyo 2020 bid. warp.ndl.go.jp/info:ndljp/pid…

At a reception at the end of that visit, to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the 1964 Olympics (still a year away?🤷‍♂️), Abe explicitly argued that hosting the Olympics is an act of narrative building. warp.ndl.go.jp/info:ndljp/pid…

Not for the first time, he uses his own comeback story to talk about national recovery and "second chances."

Not everyone is on board, however. For example, in April a JCP lawmaker, @ohsakamiyamoto, questions Shimomura Hakubun, then the education minister, about the government's commitment to find a "variety of sources" of funding for the games beyond the national treasury.

But there is an increasing inexorability to the government's embrace of Tokyo 2020. The games start showing up in government planning documents.

The government's action plan for establishing Japan as a tourist destination -- which called for doubling the number of international visitors to 20mn by 2020 -- mentions Olympics as part of goal of making Japan a top destination for international events. kantei.go.jp/jp/singi/kanko…

Its growth strategy (i.e. "the third arrow" of Abenomics), approved in June, includes a similar passing reference to the Olympics as an opportunity for Japan to become an "international event" power. kantei.go.jp/jp/singi/keiza…

By the time Abe travels to Buenos Aires to make the final pitch to the IOC, the transformation is complete. Not in his pitch to the IOC, which explains how Japan embodies the Olympic spirit, but in a press conference after -- which, of course, is for a domestic audience.

In that press conference, Abe explicitly weaves together all the threads. Responding to a question from an NHK reporter, he says, "We believe this is a great opportunity for Tokyo and Japan to shine in the center of the world."

warp.ndl.go.jp/info:ndljp/pid…

Then, using the phrase that Hashimoto Seiko had put to him back in February, he says that the Olympics can be the impetus (起爆剤) for sweeping away fifteen years of deflation and a shrinking economy.

Hosting the Olympics, he says, is a key to achieving a fundamental change in the national mindset. "Now, we have a big goal. We will move forward to this goal, to this dream. I think *this* is how we will change the declinist mindset that has prevailed until now."

The next day, of course, Tokyo was awarded the 2020 games.

Almost immediately Tokyo 2020 is called the "fourth arrow" of Abenomics, an explicit incorporation of the games into Abe's program for national revitalization.

For example, here's a column in the business magazine Diamond from 10 September 2013: diamond.jp/articles/-/415…

Fast forward to this month, when in an interview in the right-wing magazine Hanada Abe refers to critics of the Olympics as "anti-Japanese." tokyo-np.co.jp/article/115259

Without excusing this rhetorical move, I think it's clear that Abe thinks of the games as transcending "low politics" of public opinion, budgets, and the like. For him, the games are operating at a deeper (higher?) level, wrapped up with national destiny over the long term.

(This is not an unusual rhetorical move from Abe, who often accuses his critics of just not getting that he is thinking about the nation's destiny over the long term.)

Abe is the unusual politician who often thinks in decades or centuries instead of election cycles. It's easy to imagine him thinking about a ten-year-old Japanese child today being inspired to make Japan great in the future as a result of the games, much as he was.

It is precisely for this reason that I think that even with Abe out of office, it was virtually impossible for the LDP-led government to move to cancel or postpone again. The entire enterprise was imbued with this sense of destiny.

For my part, I think this mythmaking is totally unnecessary. What strikes me now is how *normal* Japan is. Japan's culture has become a global culture, and has absorbed global influences in turn. Japan's problems are the same problems faced by the G7 ("Japanification").

Has Japan's position among the world's leading countries ever been as secure, notwithstanding global changes?

Nevertheless, if the Olympics do not fuel a massive new wave of infections, it's easy to see how these rhetorical tropes will be deployed by the LDP during the general election.

Now, whether the IOC encourages this kind of national mythmaking is another conversation entirely.

Anyway, now that #Tokyo2020 is here, I do hope for the sake of the Japanese people, the athletes, and other international visitors that they are in fact "safe and secure."