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doi: 10.1111/aepr.12127 Asian Economic Policy Review (2016) 11, 139–155

Role of Sport in International Relations:

National Rebirth and Renewal
Victor CHA†
Georgetown University

The modern history of sports is inextricably intertwined with national pride, international pres-
tige, and world politics. In many ways, sport has created spillover effects that go beyond sporting
results. First, it has played an important role in nation-building and as a benchmark of national
identity. Second, it has served as a vessel through which nations and people assert political inde-
pendence and to express a distinctive identity. Third, it acts as a conduit of power, allowing nations
such as Australia to augment its global status and position on the world stage. Last, sport consti-
tutes a means of contextualizing the renewal or rebirth of a nation, like the success of the 1964
Tokyo Games for post-war Japan.
Key words: nation-building, national identity, Olympics, rebirth, soft power
JEL codes: F5

1. Introduction
Clad in their grey khakis and blue blazers, they celebrated euphorically, bouncing around
like a group of prep schoolers at a pep rally. This was the scene in Buenos Aires, Argen-
tina, where the prime minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, and his entourage celebrated news
that Tokyo had been named host of the 2020 Summer Olympic Games. The honor over
the past two centuries has been bestowed on only a few cities, and Tokyo won over Istan-
bul and Madrid, 56 years after hosting the Summer Games in 1964. The Olympics are
undeniably one of the mega sporting events of modern history, and Japan is the only
Asian country that will have hosted the signature Summer Games twice.
But the Olympics are more than just a sporting event, as much as sports purists
would like the conversation to end there.1 When Vladimir Putin won the bid for the 2014
Sochi Games, he proclaimed that “Russia is back.” When Beijing hosted the 2008 Olym-
pics, they portrayed the Games as marking three decades of Chinese modernization
dating back to Deng Xiaoping. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (2014) celebrated Tokyo’s
winning the bid later by calling it a “major catalyst through which Japan will be born
anew.” These and many other examples show that mega sporting events like the Olym-
pics become benchmarks for a nation.
This paper seeks to understand the relationship between sports and international
relations with particular reference to the case of Japan. I will advance four core argu-
ments about the significance of sport as a causal variable in world politics. These relate

Gratitude to Andy Lim for research support.

†Correspondence: Victor Cha, Department of Government and School of Foreign Service, George-
town University, 681 ICC Building, Washington, DC 20057, USA. Email: chav@georgetown.edu

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Role of Sport in International Relations Victor Cha

specifically to sport and national identity.2 We all know that sport creates national pride,
but I will try to understand, beyond this initial association, the interconnections between
sport and identity. I find that sport has been used as a tool for nation-building. It has
served as a vessel through which to assert independence. Sport can be a generator of soft
power. In all of these functions, sport becomes a means of contextualizing the renewal or
rebirth of the nation.
Two caveats are in order. First, I note that sport is by no means the only causal vari-
able in determining national identity outcomes. Indeed, a multitude of other variables,
including demographics, history, strategic culture, religion, domestic politics, national
leadership, and language, impact national identity. But while political scientists have
written in depth on all of these topics, relatively little attention has been given to the
causal role of sport despite the fact that nations and their citizens identify so intensely
with international sports competition. Second, the relationship between sports and
politics is of course not confined to national identity. Sport can affect international
diplomacy as it did when “ping-pong” diplomacy played a role in Sino-American rap-
prochement. It can be an instrument of coercive sanctioning, such as when the Interna-
tional Olympic Committee (IOC) levies bans on countries from participating in the
Games (e.g. South Africa, or wartime Germany), or when countries protest diplomati-
cally by boycotting games (e.g. the US boycott of the 1980 Moscow Games or the Soviet
boycott of the 1984 Los Angeles Games). Sport can be a proxy for international conflict,
as George Orwell famously described sport as “war minus the shooting” (also see
Szymanski paper in this volume).3 Addressing each of these causal linkages between
sports and politics is beyond the scope of this article, which will seek to unpack the link-
ages between sport and a country’s all-important sense of self. This linkage appears to be
the core requisite relationship to understanding all other elements of sport and politics.
The degree to which sports is wrapped up with prestige and national reputation will
naturally have a bearing on its utility as a diplomatic tool, as an instrument for sanction-
ing, or as an agent of political change.
To the extent possible, I will draw broadly from Asia’s experience with mega sporting
events like the Olympics and World Cup, but in particular from Japan’s history in illus-
trating some of these arguments. Japan is an important case because it is the only Asian
country that has hosted the Olympics four times, thus providing a rich set of data for the
case studies. Still, not all dynamics can be explained with Japan, and certain other
examples will be called upon. Finally, the implications of these arguments for the 2020
Tokyo Olympics will also be considered.

1.1 The nation’s narrative of sport

There is a basic puzzle surrounding the Olympics. Generally speaking, these games are
expensive, logistics nightmares, and potential terrorist targets. Until 1984, most of the
cities that won the bid for the games ended up absorbing the exorbitant costs for years
later, with empty under-used Olympic facilities standing as monuments to economic
mismanagement. The Montreal Games in 1976, for example, was a financial disaster,
putting the city in debt for 30 years (CBC News, 2006). Beijing’s 2008 Games were the

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Victor Cha Role of Sport in International Relations

most expensive in history, costing $40 billion (Reuters, 2008). Already, the cost of the
2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics has doubled, forcing organizers to cut back on some
event venues (Daily Mail, 2015). Yet cities continue to bid avidly to host the Games.
Why?
There is the cache of being an Olympic city, which can boost tourism, sell t-shirts,
and win endorsements, but the drivers go deeper than that. These events constitute
important benchmarks of national identity. Sport, national pride, and international pres-
tige are inextricably intertwined. The desire to host major events like the Olympics and
to perform well is intimately related to a nation’s sense of its self-image and pride of its
citizens. Participation and performance in global sport are also related to a country’s
international prestige and the message that a government wants to send to the world
about its country. This dynamic applies uniformly, whether we are talking about Tokyo
2020, Beijing in 2008, Los Angeles in 1984, or even Berlin in 1936. Sport acts as a prism
through which national identity gets refracted domestically and internationally.
Why is sport such a critical lens for identity? Because sport creates emotion. Winning
or losing in international sport is a cathartic experience that is felt by the entire nation.
Cheering on athletes and teams clad in the colors of one’s flag generates emotions of joy
or anger among countrymen that are not easily replicated in any other arena be it art,
music, politics, or business. Victories represent the validation of one’s place in the world.
Or they symbolize an aspiration point that the nation wants to elevate itself to. Sport is a
cathartic and emotional experience that lends to prideful self-identification. This
emotion causes countries to see their national image as affected by their performance in
sport. The Margaret Thatcher and John Major governments took poor British perfor-
mances in global sport so seriously in the 1980s that they ditched the minister of sport
and put all decisions within the prime minister’s office. They created a new Department
of National Heritage with improved sport performance as a priority. The Australian gov-
ernment undertook similar measures after their subpar performance in the 1976 Mon-
treal Olympics. This was not sport for sport’s sake, but equated directly with a country’s
heritage and self-worth.

1.2 Nation-building
Sport has been used as a critical instrument for constructing national identity and
nation-building. In the 1956, 1960, and 1964 Olympics, for example, a unified German
team represented the aspirations for creating a sense of unity between the two
Germanies despite the Cold War conflict. In a spirit of compromise, Beethoven’s Ode to
Joy was played when West or East German athletes took the medal stand rather than
national anthems. But as the division solidified, and the Berlin Wall was erected, this
symbol of unity disappeared with the 1968 Summer Games. After the Cold War, newly
reunified Germany and Yemen used sport to help build a sense of national unity. The
two Koreas have used sport to vicariously experience dreams of unification. By contrast,
regimes like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union used sport to demonstrate and assert
the superiority of their system and politics over the West to a domestic and international
audience.

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In Yemen, for example, sport was used effectively to forge positive attitudes toward
unification of the country. The 1990 union of North Yemen (Capitalist Yemen Arab
Republic) and South Yemen (People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen) was dominated by
the relatively better-off North. In spite of North Yemen’s larger population and richer
economy, the guiding principle adopted by the political leadership for an initial 3-year
period of integration was unity based on strict equity. Uniting the two government’s
faceless bureaucracies, ministries, and postal systems equitably, however, did not capture
the imagination of the Yemeni people like unification of the two football leagues.
The initial step was to bring the two leagues and teams together to play in Yemen’s
first unified football season. They appropriately named the first championship tourna-
ment the “Yemen Cup.” More important, they played the final match on the 1-year anni-
versary of unification. A national team then had to be selected to compete in the 1990
Asian Games in China. Again, principles of unity and equity became very significant.
Planners had to choose between a team of the best players regardless of whether they
hailed from the north or south, or adhering to a strict quota system of players regardless
of relative talent. The former promised a better team, and that team’s performance might
foster positive feelings about unification. On the other hand, the team’s strong perfor-
mance might be offset by feelings of alienation and discrimination felt by some Yemenis.
In the end, the Yemenis chose the quota system, selecting 32 members for the
national team equally from the north and south. Every last detail was covered to ensure a
sense of equity. The team roster listed northern and southern players alternately. Cap-
tainship of the team rotated every four games between a northerner and southerner. The
two assistant coaches were from the north and south (the head coach was Brazilian).
Obviously, this did not make for the best team, but sport became a stage on which
important ideational and political messages could be sent about how the political leader-
ship wanted the united nation of Yemen to come together. As one observer correctly
noted, “[c]ompeting as a truly unified team was the central concern; at best, winning the
matches was a secondary matter. Symbols were clearly more important than substance”
(Stevenson & Alaug, 2000).
North and South Korea have also utilized sport to create a sense of unity. Through
participating together at international sport events, the two halves of a nation have
sought to live vicariously the dream of national unification. In June 2000, President Kim
Dae Jung of the south and Kim Jong Il of the north held a breakthrough summit
meeting. Shortly thereafter, the world watched with rapture the site of 180 North and
South Korean athletes participating in the opening ceremonies at the Sydney Olympics
for the first time as a single delegation flying a white “unification” flag with a UN-blue-
colored peninsula emblazoned on it rather than their national flags. Two years later at
the Asian Games hosted in Busan, South Korea, the two delegations again marched
together in the opening ceremonies in an equally moving moment.4 The Busan games
marked the first time the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) participated in
an international sport event hosted by the Republic of Korea (ROK), and they brought a
large delegation of over 600 athletes, cheerleaders, and officials who were warmly wel-
comed in the South. At the 2003 Asian Winter Games in Aomori, Japan, the two Korean

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Victor Cha Role of Sport in International Relations

teams not only marched together in the opening ceremony, they ate meals together, sat in
the bleachers together, and of course rooted against the Japanese together (New York
Times, 2003).
The aspirations of the ROK are eventually to field a united team of the best athletes
to compete, not just march, at the Olympics. The last set of inter-Korean negotiations for
a joint Olympic team took place before the Beijing Games in Guangzhou in September
2005 where an agreement was reached in principle to field a united team. Negotiations
continued in Kaesong sometimes with the IOC as a third party, in spite of real-world dis-
ruptions like the DPRK missile tests in July 2006 and nuclear test in October 2006. The
two sides reached agreement on the flag of a united team (the “Unification” flag) and the
national anthem to be played on the medal podium (a traditional Korean folk song,
“Arirang”), and even the uniforms, but the negotiations ran aground soon thereafter.
According to officials involved in the talks, the ROK maintained that a united team
should field only the best athletes from the two countries.5 The DPRK, however, wanted
a quota system of 50% for each country (Asia Times, 2008).6 For a country like South
Korea with world-class athletes, this formula was hardly acceptable. In the end, the two
countries only agreed to field a unified delegation of supporters for the Beijing games.
Although not as substantive as the Yemen case, sport allowed the two countries to vicari-
ously live out hopes and aspirations that diplomacy could not create. Sport created feel-
ings of unity and accorded to the weaker North equality and respect.

1.3 Asserting independence

Another way that sport and identity are linked is through the assertion of national inde-
pendence. Throughout history, sport has served as a channel for expression of a distinc-
tive identity and political independence. In Europe, for example, Irish sport was
intimately linked with opposition to English rule for over a century. The Gaelic Athletic
Association (GAA) was established in 1884 with the express purpose of promoting tradi-
tional Gaelic sports. The GAA mounted an aggressive campaign to revive traditional
Irish sports, such as hurling and Gaelic football. It also consciously resisted English
sports like rugby, soccer, and cricket. The 1906 Olympics in Athens offered another
opportunity for Irish identity. Only the fourth Olympic Games of the modern era and
the first to stage medal ceremonies with the three national flags in honor of the winners,
the Games saw Peter O’Connor win the silver medal in the triple jump. An Irishman who
was unable to register for the Games under Ireland and only could do so under the
British Olympic Council, O’Connor shimmied up the flagpole during the Olympic
medal ceremonies to pull down the British Union Jack and to wave the Irish flag in
protest. Sport became a potent symbol of Ireland’s political independence and resistance
through the 20th century (Houlihan, 1994).
In Asia, the adoption and then later eschewing of baseball was intimately connected
with Japanese assertions of national identity and independence. Today, Major League
Baseball enjoys its largest overseas market by far in Japan where some 60% or 70% of its
$100 million in foreign revenues originate (Lewis, 2000). With early stars like Hideki
Matsui, Ichiro Suzuki, and Daisuke Matsuzaka, and recent pitching stars like Yu Darvish,

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Masahiro Tanaka, and Hisashi Iawakuma, among numerous others in the major leagues,
Japan’s love for baseball spans the national and international. Japanese baseball teams are
incredibly popular, hometown players doing well in the American baseball major leagues
makes front page news, and an entire generation of Japanese youth has adopted the
games as the national pastime.
Japan’s interest in baseball started in the 1850s–1870s, sparked by American mission-
aries, and took hold as one of the first team sports in a country that engaged in individu-
alistic pastimes like judo and kendo. Baseball was appealing to the Japanese because the
conduct of the game reflected values that were seen as consonant with those of Japan,
including the emphasis on harmony, order, loyalty, and discipline (Houlihan, 1994).
American baseball teams toured Japan in the early 20th century, including stars like Babe
Ruth, and were wildly popular. Many baseball terms in English were adopted as loan
words in Japanese.
The proactive adoption of baseball was linked to Japanese identity in two positive
and complementary ways. First, it validated the notion of Japan as a modern nation. At
this time in history, Asia was in the throes of contending with the intrusion of Western
powers and questions of whether Asia was capable of “modernization” along the lines of
the West. Japan’s adoption of American baseball fit well with their own view that they
were the only Asian power capable of modernization and internationalization. Second,
while baseball reinforced Japan’s view of its own modernity, it also showed that tradi-
tional Japanese values were compatible with the modernization wave from the West.
Because baseball was seen as reflecting values like harmony, order, and discipline that
were traditionally Japanese, it symbolized the ability of Japan to modernize but still
retain its cultural identity.
By the 1920s and 1930s, Japan’s identity and its views on baseball changed. After
having established itself as the premier imperial power in Asia by defeating the Chinese
in wars in 1895 and the Russians in 1904, Japan grew anxious after World War I, when
the post-war settlements were viewed by Tokyo as not according Japan its rightful place
in the international hierarchy of states. As relations with the USA deteriorated, baseball
came to be seen by the ultranationalists in Japan as the sport of the adversary and as “un-
Japanese.” The first step at remediation was to “Japanize” the game by removing all
American phrases. But eventually they banned the game entirely, with baseball never
returning to Japan until after World War II, when the occupation authorities reintro-
duced the game as a way to bring reconciliation between the two nations. Both cases
illustrate how America’s pastime became a symbol for asserting an internationalized
Japanese identity in the 19th century, only to be replaced by ultra-nationalism in the
early 20th century (Houlihan, 1994).

1.4 Sport as soft power

Sport can translate into “soft power” for some countries. Sport is not just a tool to
express national identity or to convey an image of modernity, but in some cases a posi-
tive reputation in sport can augment a country’s global status and position on the world
stage. In this sense, strong performance in sport becomes a power asset – albeit soft

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power – that redounds to the country’s benefit. Perhaps the best example here is the case
of Australia. Australia is seen generally as a country that punches way above its weight on
the global stage. It is respected as a serious citizen and a contributor to numerous multi-
nation efforts by the UN and other organizations devoted to poverty alleviation, climate
change, and peacekeeping. Australia was one of the four key members of the Tsunami
Relief Core Group (including the USA, Japan, and India) established in December 2004
to respond to the tsunami disaster that hit South and Southeast Asia. It has been a critical
ally in the global war on terror, committing combat troops and special forces to opera-
tions in Iraq and Afghanistan. It has been a leader of the G-20 nations. It was a member
of the UN Security Council from 2013 to 2014. How has Australia managed these
accomplishments and attained a level of prestige and treatment in the international
system that one would not expect of a middle-ranking (at best) power in terms of overall
capabilities?
Part of the answer stems from the way Australia has effectively used sport to reflect
positively on its reputation and image. Both strong performance in, and the hosting of,
major global sport events have had the effect of putting the Aussies on the map as a
country to be reckoned with. Australia has hosted the Olympics a disproportionate
number of times since 1896 given the size of the country, having had the games twice
in Melbourne (1956) and in Sydney (2000). By contrast, all of the rest of Asia hosted
the summer games only three times over the same time period. In the 1956 games,
Australia took 35 medals overall and 13 gold, placing them third in the overall
standings, and in 2000 they finished fourth overall with 58 medals, taking home 16
gold medals – remarkable achievements given the relative size of the population.
Moreover, the Aussies take their sport seriously. In 1976, when they performed poorly
at the Montreal Olympics winning only five medals (none gold), the government
established a national sports institute and boosted public spending in order to improve
performance.
The Australians have developed a reputation as the gold-standard hosts of global
sport events. The 2000 Sydney Olympics was widely acclaimed as one of the most well-
managed events in the history of the games. Coming after the 1996 Atlanta Games in
particular, which were a logistics nightmare, Sydney stood out as exceptional. Both the
regular games and the Paralympics received acclaim from the IOC and sportswriters.
Some commentators proclaimed that Sydney should become the permanent host city for
the summer games, as they raved about the organization, hospitality, and beauty of the
city.
How does being a great host and having great athletes translate into soft power? First,
sport has the effect of drawing the international spotlight to Australia. Second, once in
the spotlight, Australia enjoys natural spillover effects where the focus is not only on
being good hosts and good athletes, but also on Australia as a model of liberal-
democratic values, open economy, and global citizen in a region of the world where such
values have not yet become universal. For Americans, sport has allowed Australia to tell
its story as a country that share a New World Heritage with the USA, and moreover has
fought side by side with the USA in every war in the 20th century.

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Role of Sport in International Relations Victor Cha

These were the very same messages that were broadcast to the world by Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice during her Australia trip in March 2006. Her 3-day schedule in
Australia included meetings with Prime Minister John Howard, Foreign Minister Alex-
ander Downer, veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and a lecture to a university audi-
ence. But the Australians knew full well the Secretary’s love of sports, and scheduled a
day trip to Melbourne to attend the Commonwealth Games. Rice and her party (the
author included) watched the swimming meets with Olympic gold medalist and world
record holder Ian Thorpe (who was injured), and she participated in gold medal presen-
tations for the athletes. Her visit to the Commonwealth Games received world media
attention.
While this is great public relations, it also demonstrates an important link between
sport and soft power. Hosting Rice at the Games garnered Australia attention on the
global stage. While the visual message was an American–Australian love of sport, the
deeper political message was of a strong American–Australian partnership and alliance
based on common values shared in both sport and society – open competition, rule of
law, transparency, and fair play. This had the effect of elevating a remotely located
country to the center stage as a model of liberal democracy and global citizenship.
It is interesting to note that this global reputation for Australia cannot be explained
merely in material power terms. Nowhere was this soft power more apparent than in the
1993 IOC decision on the host for the 2000 Summer Olympics. The two finalist cities
were Sydney and Beijing. By most metrics, Beijing should have been favored. It had not
yet had the games while Australia had hosted once already. Bringing the games to the
world’s largest population would have had untold benefits for the Olympics and its many
corporate sponsors. But on ideational grounds, Australia was viewed as a society that
fully embraced and embodied the values consonant with the Olympic ideal. China, on
the other hand, only 4 years after its brutal crackdown on the student demonstrations in
Tiananmen Square, represented the antithesis of this ideal. Sport and soft power were
mutually reinforcing for Australia. For China, it would take another 8 years before
Beijing would win the bid for the Games.7

2. Rebirth and Renewal

It is through the mechanisms and nation-building, asserting independence, and soft
power that sport can become a way to represent the birth or rebirth of a nation. And par-
ticularly in Asia, where the Olympics comes so rarely, sport becomes the platform upon
which Japan, Korea, and China have trumpeted their arrival (or rearrival) on the world
stage as a major power.
In the 100 plus years of the modern Olympic movement, the hallmark Summer
Games only came to Asia three times. On each of these occasions, however, the Games
were a “mega-event” in the truest sense of the term, and marked a critical watershed in
the country’s national identity, as well as in the image it wanted to portray to the world.
In the cases of Tokyo 1964, Seoul 1988, and Beijing 2008, there was arguably no single

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Victor Cha Role of Sport in International Relations

event in post-World War II era that played a bigger role in shaping the nation’s narrative
of where it had come from and what it aspired to be in the future.

2.1 The Tokyo Olympics of 19648

The Tokyo Games of 1964 were an unprecedented experience for both Japan and Asia.
Because this constituted the first time the Olympics were held in an Asian city, Japan was
in many ways seen as the region’s trailblazer, and as the first Asian power put on the
world stage after World War II. Questions abounded about how well the games would
fare in an oriental culture. Would the infrastructure meet world-class standards? Would
language barriers prove to be a problem for organizing the games? The stakes were high
as each successive Olympics until that point promised to be the largest yet, and Tokyo
was no exception. The 1964 Games were slated at the time to set new records in partici-
pation and attendance, featuring over 7500 athletes and spectators from all over the
globe.

2.2 “1964, not 1945”

For Japan, the Games marked a turning point in the country’s 20th century identity, and
in particular offered an opportunity to provide the people with some separation between
Japan’s pre-war and post-war identity. This was not the first time Japan attempted to
attain this separation. In 1955, Japan bid to host the 1960 Olympic Games, but memories
of the war were still too fresh in the minds of many, and the application was unsuccess-
ful. Thus, to have the opportunity to host in 1964 offered a high-profile and very sym-
bolic way to close the door on a dark period in Japanese history. If the narrative of the
first half of the 20th century was Japan as a revisionist, ultranationalist power that tried
to change the international system only to suffer defeat and foreign military occupation,
then the 1964 Games offered a way to write a new post-war narrative for Japan: Japan
was no longer an aberrant actor in the international system, but was a peace-loving,
affluent, and supportive member of that system. The Olympics celebrated this transition.
As Buruma (2003) aptly observed, on October 10, 1964 (the opening of the Tokyo
Games) Japan’s decades of shame were over, and the nation and its people rejoined the
international community.
Japan performed well at the Olympics, winning 16 gold medals (third behind the
USA and Soviet Union) and taking fourth in the overall medal tally. The performance of
the Japanese athletes overall in the games took on much greater significance than merely
playing well and winning gold, silver, or bronze before the home crowd. Each medal won
was a metaphor for another nail in the coffin of 1945, sealing forever Japan’s dark past
and showing that the new Japan was excelling in its return to the community of nations.
The idea therefore was that 1964 was not 1945 – the Olympics were in effect a temporal
wall between the two eras (analogous to what the 1972 Munich Games would mean for
Germany and its past). Nowhere was this symbolism more apparent than in the opening
ceremony where crowds watched the torch-bearer Yoshinori Sakai – a young Japanese
runner born only a few minutes after the atomic bomb on Hiroshima – light the

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stadium’s Olympic flame marking the start of the Games. There could not have been a
more powerful way to make the point that the start of the Games symbolized the end of
pre-war Japan (Cha, 2009a,b).

2.3 “1936 and 1964”

At the same time that the 1964 Games meant the closure of one period in Japanese
history, it also signified the continuation of another – the story of Japan as a great power
returning to its rightful place in the world. In this regard, the common description of the
1964 Olympics as marking Japan’s “coming out” party on the world scene as a major
power is not accurate. This may be an apt description of South Korea and China’s
hosting of the Olympics, where Seoul used 1988 and Beijing used 2008 to construct a
national narrative of economic developmental successes, punctuated by the Olympic
stamp of approval. In both of these cases, the non-democratic nature of the two host
governments caused each to spend enormous effort to utilize the Games, not just as a
sporting event, but to legitimize its political rule, whether this was the military dictator-
ship in Seoul or the rule of the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing (Cha, 2010).9 But
the differences with Japan are subtle and important.
Japan was always a major power even when it laid in defeat in 1945. After World War
I, Japan’s great power status was validated in its participation in the Washington and
London naval conferences. Tokyo was originally selected in 1936 to host the 1940 games.
At the time, the IOC viewed this as an entirely appropriate choice commensurate with
Japan’s position as a world power. But the decision came under greater scrutiny as Impe-
rial Japan’s hegemonic ambitions led to the invasion of Manchuria and the outbreak of
war with China. In 1938, Imperial Japan pulled out from hosting the event, and was not
invited by the IOC to participate in subsequent Olympics because of its wartime actions
(the 1940 Games were relocated to Helsinki, Finland, and then canceled outright with
the outbreak of World War II). The question at the end of World War II, therefore, was
not if Japan would reemerge as a great power, but when and in what form this inevitably
would occur.
The hallmarks of Japan’s post-war economic recovery and return to major power
status coincided with the hosting of the Olympics. By 1964, Japan was the fifth largest
industrial nation, having enjoyed a decade of unparalleled prosperity of 10% per annum
average growth, full employment, and soaring personal income levels, manifest in the
1960s phenomenon of the ubiquitous Japanese tourist groups around the world. Japan
became a GATT Article 9 country, and International Monetary Fund Article 8 country in
1964, both signs of its advanced status.10 It received full membership in the exclusive
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development club of nations in the same
year, and hosted the International Monetary Fund–World Bank conference.
For Japanese, therefore, a connection was evident between 1964 and 1936. Not in the
sense of a return to ultra-nationalism and imperialism, but in the world’s acknowledg-
ment of Japan as a great power. The 1964 Games evoked the feeling of a long wait having
finally come to an end. A New York Times curtain-raiser the week before the Games cap-
tured the moment:

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Victor Cha Role of Sport in International Relations

‘It was as if Tokyo’s 10 1/2 million people couldn’t wait for the official beginning of
an event to which they have looked forward for almost a quarter of a century. Tokyo
was to have had the Games in 1940, but World War II intervened. The atmosphere
in the city today was buoyant, as if in a culmination of 24 years of tense waiting’
(Trumbell, 1964).

The Games were so important to Japan, evident in the lack of concern for almost
anything else that was happening around the world at the time, including a political
crisis with a beleaguered prime minister.11 China exploded its first nuclear weapon in the
midst of the Games (October 16, 1964), but that did not even matter:

‘Who was faster, stronger or cleverer in 20 Olympic events seemed far more
important for the moment to the crowds at the stadiums and other locations of the
Games than who was prime minister somewhere or who was playing with
explosives’ (Trumbell, 1964).

The 1964 Olympics, therefore, represented national renewal and rebirth. The
Olympics lent a resonant touch to an evolving national narrative of Japan as a
reformed and resuscitated global power. The 1964 Games did not herald Japan’s
coming out as newly developing country, but its reintegration in the 20th century
international system as a leader. The proper comparison, therefore, is to Rome 1960,
Munich 1972, and London 2012, rather than to Seoul 1988 and Beijing (2008 (Larson
& Park, 1993).
The praise of sport as a vehicle for national renewal is, of course, not universal.
Cases abound in which sport did not have its intended effect. For example, the 2010
World Cup in South Africa and the 2014 World Cup in Brazil – two mega sporting
events on a scale larger than the Olympics – were meant to showcase both countries
arrival on the world stage. While the world’s attention showered on both hosts, neither
has emerged from these events in a substantively different position from the past.12
Even in cases where sport creates a moment of catharsis for a nation’s citizens, it is
arguable whether and for how long this message remains relevant to the politics of the
country. Moreover, my argument does not specify well the degree to which sports or
other parallel accomplishments by a nation contribute to renewal. Was it Myanmar’s
hosting of the 2013 Southeast Asian Games or its chairmanship of ASEAN in 2014 that
represented the country’s return to the regional stage as an active player? Or was it
Korea’s hosting of the 1988 Seoul Games, or its transition to democratization in 1987
the primary cause of its global recognition as a success story?13 In the end, it is hard to
disentangle such causes in terms of their relative importance. However, unlike other
national accomplishments, such as Burma’s 2014 ASEAN chairmanship or Japan’s 1975
membership in the G-7, or South Korea’s 1987 democratic transition, sport provides
the populist context for the national renewal narrative. In this regard, sport certainly
does not define the framework, but it broadens the appeal and can cause an entire
nation to internalize the narrative.

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Role of Sport in International Relations Victor Cha

2.4 Tokyo 2020

Despite these caveats, the role of sport in contributing to rebirth or renewal in Asia is
uncanny. In this context, the significance of the 2020 Games for Japan extends far
beyond the sporting nature of the event. In the run-up to the Games, we can be certain
to see stories in the news media cycle about logistics. Will the venues be completed on
time? How efficient will be Japan’s Olympic plan? How far over estimated costs will the
Games be? Stories that dominated the news coverage in the run-up to the 1964 Games
like the one below are sure to emerge:

‘Officially, everyone professes confidence that [the country] will be ready when the
ceremonial torch is finally lit in the great National Stadium. Still, the race between
construction workers and the Olympic flame bearer is likely to be uncomfortably
close. . . . The futuristic looking National Gymnasium, where swimming and
basketball games are to be held, is swathed in scaffolding. . . . Construction here is
admittedly so far behind that Olympic judoists may have to duck wet paint signs’
(Sklarewitz, 1964).

During the Games, there will be great attention paid to the performance of Japanese
athletes. Host countries face an unusual pressure, largely driven internally rather than
externally to perform well. It is part of the narrative, of course, of the Olympic host –
logistically, to carry off a flawless Games, but also in terms of performance, to have one’s
country perform well in the medal count (see Tables 1 and 2). Beijing, for example, was
obsessed with winning the total medal count in 2008, and as a general rule host Asian
nations average higher medal counts in the years that they host the Games than not (see
Table 3).

2.5 “Japan is back”

The most significant narrative of the Games will be center on the themes of renewal.
This takes several contexts. First, the Games represent a reaffirmation of Japan as a leader
and trailblazer in Asia. In 1964, it was the first Asian country (except Australia) to host a
Summer Olympics, and in 1972 Sapporo the first to host a Winter Olympics. In 2020, it
will again enjoy the distinction of being the first Asian country to host two Summer
Olympics and four Games overall.
Second, the 2020 Games are likely to be viewed as benchmarking Japan’s reemer-
gence on the world stage as a global power and global citizen. The period between 1964
and 2020 saw Japan’s emergence as a major power, but also a sense that the world under-
appreciated Japan’s contributions. This was followed by economic stagnation, social
malaise, and a degree of relative decline in the face of Chinese growth. Following a series
of ineffective prime ministers from the opposition and the March 2011 triple disaster, the
Armitage–Nye Report in 2012 outright challenged Japanese leaders to arrest this decline
into the status of a second-tier power (Armitage & Nye, 2012). In this context, the return
of the Liberal Democratic Party (under Shinzo Abe) to the prime ministership, Japan’s
fiscal stimulus, a new security doctrine, and generally more proactive stance in world

150 © 2016 Japan Center for Economic Research

 Table 1 Summer Olympics medal counts for China, Japan, and South Korea

China Japan South Korea

Victor Cha

Year Total Gold Silver Bronze Total Gold Silver Bronze Total Gold Silver Bronze

1896–1912 Did not participate Did not participate Did not participate
1920 2 0 2 0
1924 1 0 0 1
1928 5 2 2 1
1932 Participated as the Republic of China 19 7 7 4

© 2016 Japan Center for Economic Research

1936 20 6 4 10
1948 Did not participate 2 0 0 2
1952 – 9 1 6 2 2 0 1 1
1956 Did not participate 19 4 10 5 2 0 1 1
1960 18 4 7 7 –
1964 29 16 5 8 3 0 2 1
1968 25 11 7 7 2 0 1 1
1972 29 13 8 8 1 0 1 0
1976 25 9 6 10 6 1 1 4
1980 Did not participate Did not participate
1984 31 15 7 9 30 10 6 14 19 6 6 7
1988 28 5 11 12 14 4 3 7 33 12 10 11
1992 52 16 21 15 21 3 8 10 27 11 5 11
1996 49 16 22 11 14 3 6 5 27 7 15 5
2000 58 28 16 14 18 6 7 5 28 8 10 10
2004 63 32 17 14 37 16 9 12 30 9 12 9
2008 100 51 21 28 25 9 6 10 31 13 10 8
2012 88 38 27 23 38 7 14 17 28 13 8 7

151
Role of Sport in International Relations

Source: Data for Table 1 are collected from the International Olympic Committee, accessible here http://www.olympic.org/ioc.
 Table 2 Winter Olympics medal counts for China, Japan, and South Korea

152
China Japan South Korea

Year Total Gold Silver Bronze Total Gold Silver Bronze Total Gold Silver Bronze

1924 Did not participate Did not participate Did not participate
1928 –
1932 –
1936 –
1948 Did not participate –
Role of Sport in International Relations

1952 – Did not participate

1956 1 0 1 0 –
1960 – –
1964 – –
1968 – –
1972 3 1 1 1 –
1976 – –
1980 – 1 0 1 0 –
1984 – 1 0 1 0 –
1988 – 1 0 0 1 –
1992 3 0 3 0 7 1 2 4 4 2 1 1
1994 3 0 1 2 5 1 2 2 6 4 1 1
1998 8 0 6 2 10 5 1 4 6 3 1 2
2002 8 2 2 4 2 0 1 1 4 2 2 0
2006 11 2 4 5 1 1 0 0 11 6 3 2
2010 11 5 2 4 5 0 3 2 14 6 6 2
2014 9 3 4 2 8 1 4 3 8 3 3 2
Victor Cha

© 2016 Japan Center for Economic Research

Source: Data for Table 2 are collected from the International Olympic Committee, accessible here http://www.olympic.org/ioc.
Victor Cha Role of Sport in International Relations

Table 3 Average medal count when hosting and when not hosting since 1948

Medal counts USA Russia† China Japan‡ South Korea Australia

Average when hosting 137.5 195 100 28 33 46.5

Average when not hosting 92.8 93.2 52.7 21.4 14.8 23.2

†Used Soviet Union from the 1952 Games to the 1988 Games.
‡With the exception of Japan, every country achieved their highest medal count during a host
year.
Source: Data collected from the International Olympic Committee, accessible here
http://www.olympic.org/ioc.

affairs fit well with the narrative of the 2020 Games. When the opening ceremonies of
the Tokyo Games take place, they will be written about as a statement not so much of
Japanese national power, but of Japan’s return, through the Olympics, to a central role in
world affairs as a global citizen. Certainly for Abe (who will not be prime minister in
2020), the concept of civic nationalism resonates with the Olympic ideals.
The renewal of Japan’s prominence on the international stage, through hosting the
Olympics, will be seen as new, but it will not be disconnected from the past. Indeed,
there will be active connections with 1964 to demonstrate the continuity of Japan’s
prominence in the 20th and 21st century. One of the ways this will become obvious is
through the physical association between the two eras. Partly by design, and partly as a
result of cost overruns, the Tokyo Olympic Organizing Committee has made the decision
to refurbish some of the more iconic 1964 sites for 2020, including the Olympic
Stadium. Physical change is a big part of any host city’s transformation as the Olympics
becomes a platform for city mayors and national governments to jumpstart both old and
new plans for urban renewal. In Japan’s case, many of the venues that were built for 1964
will undergo massive renovations (The Economist, 2014). The changes will not be as
dramatic as those that Tokyo underwent in the run-up to the 1964 Games, but they will
constitute a physical reminder of the connection between the two centuries in Japan’s
history.
Finally, there will be no more poignant statement of Japan’s renewal than the incor-
poration of the Tohoku region into elements of the Games. Fukushima City, the site of
the 2011 meltdown, was a concern for IOC officials in their deliberations who ques-
tioned whether radiation levels, food, and water would be safe for Olympic athletes. As
one government official in Fukushima said, “[w]e are still in the process of recovery from
the disaster, and it would be a dream to have world-class athletes play here” (Zaccardi,
2015). The IOC’s decision to award Tokyo the bid prompted the acceleration of the
clean-up and recovery efforts, with the goal being to run a section of the Olympic torch
relay through Tohoku and to possibly stage some of the events (e.g. baseball) in the
region.14 Just as Yoshinori Sakai lit the torch in 1964, an athlete from this region assigned
to a similar task would lend a resonant touch to the theme of renewal.

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Role of Sport in International Relations Victor Cha

Notes
1 “Sports purists” discourage the discussion of sports outside of an athletic competitive context,
and deplore the discussion of sport in a political context (see Cha, 2009b, Chapter 2).
2 This paper is a later and different version of my arguments in Chapter 3 in Cha (2009b).
3 For further discussion of sport as a causal variable in diplomacy, national identity, and political
change (see Cha, 2009a).
4 North and South Korea marched together in the 2000, 2004, and 2006 Winter Olympics and
Asian Games. They did not march together in 2008 or 2012. Negotiations to do so in Beijing
2008 failed.
5 This dilemma surfaces largely with the fielding of athletes for team sports. Individual athletes
are eligible to compete at sporting events for the Games based on criteria set by the IOC and
international sporting federations.
6 Personal interview, ROK Unification Ministry official, Washington DC, July 9, 2007.
7 In the 1998 IOC corruption scandal, it was revealed that the president of the Australian
Olympic Committee offered 50,000 Australian dollars to the Kenyan and Uganda members of
the IOC on the eve of the final vote, although it is unclear whether this alleged bribe made the
difference in the final IOC vote (see Brownell, 2008, p. 142).
8 This paper focuses on the Tokyo 1964 Games. The story of Beijing 2008 can be found in Cha
(2010).
9 While the 1988 Seoul Games were held when South Korea was a democracy. The Olympic bid
took place 7 years earlier when the country was run by a military government under Chun
Doo-hwan.
10 Article 8 status for a country means it forgoes the right to restrict its imports for balance-of-
payments purposes (see Baerwald, 1965, and Togo, 2005).
11 Prime Minister Hayato Ikeda resigned on October 25, the day after the closing ceremony of the
1964 Olympics. He was admitted to the hospital for laryngeal cancer a month earlier.
12 Gratitude to Hal Hill for raising this point.
13 I thank Aki Tanaka for raising these points.
14 Baseball was voted out of the Olympics in 2005 – effective in London 2012. It might be
brought back for Tokyo 2020 though. It has not been included in Rio 2016.

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