exhibiting a new japan: the tokyo olympics of 1964 and expo '70 in osaka

Exhibiting a new Japan: the Tokyo Olympics of 1964and Expo ’70 in Osaka*

Sandra WilsonMurdoch University

AbstractUsing official materials and media commentary, this article examines two large-scale spectaclesand their implications for post-war Japanese nationalism. Discursively, the Olympics and theWorld Exposition presented a clear vision of Japan: as a nation at the forefront of theinternational scene, fit to act as a champion of the non-Western world and firmly unifiedinternally. In concrete ways, the two events strengthened the process of national integration thatwas gathering pace in the nineteen-sixties, especially through the provision of new networks oftransport and communications. They also helped to rehabilitate the post-war Japanese state, sothat it could more readily be seen as a benign entity devoted to the national interest and thepeople’s welfare. The article illuminates a key moment in the emergence of new nationalself-images and in the construction of national life in post-war Japan.

In the elaboration of ideas about nation, major spectacles can play a crucial role. AsDavid Kertzer points out, a nation can only exist through its symbols, since it has notangible existence in itself.1 Moreover, if dominant national images are to change, itfollows that there must be occasions or opportunities for the display and disseminationof new symbols with new implications. Post-war Japan was no exception. Thenineteen-sixties, in particular, constituted a delicate moment in the evolution ofnational self-images, as Japan moved from a defeated, divided country without afirst-rate economy towards greater prosperity and confidence. Two large-scale eventscontributed to the process.The Tokyo Olympics of 1964 and Expo ’70 in Osaka werethe most self-conscious displays of ‘nation’ in Japan since the end of the Second WorldWar. Between them they set out deliberately-crafted versions of Japan’s past, presentand future designed to capture the attention of enormous numbers of people. Despitetheir international orientation, the most important audience for both events wasdomestic. In the case of the Olympics, the audience experience was largely mediatedby television, and the most popular parts of the Games, including the openingceremony, were watched by the great majority of Japanese households. As for Expo’70, it is estimated that an astonishing fifty per cent of the population actually travelledto Osaka to see the exhibits. Overall, then, a very large proportion of the populationwas exposed to the versions of Japaneseness that were on display in 1964 and 1970.

* Earlier versions of this article were presented at the 16th Biennial Conference of the Asian StudiesAssociation of Australia at the University of Wollongong, New South Wales, in June 2006; at the workshop inhonour of Stephen S. Large held at the faculty of oriental studies, University of Cambridge, Sept. 2006; and atthe Japanese History Workshop at the University of Sydney in Dec. 2007.The author is grateful to the organizersof those events and the audiences. Thanks are also due to Nanette Gottlieb, Anne-Marie Medcalf, BeatriceTrefalt and David Wells for helpful comments on drafts of the article, and to Peter Kornicki and Janet Hunterfor lending the author material from their personal collections.

1 D. I. Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, and Power (New Haven, Conn., 1988), p. 6.

Copyright © 2011 Institute of Historical Research DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2281.2010.00568.x Historical Research, vol. 85, no. 227 (February 2012)Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

The scale and national reach of these events raise key questions about Japan in thenineteen-sixties, in at least two areas. First, what were the dominant ideologies ofnation as displayed in the 1964 and 1970 spectacles; and second, what do these twoevents tell us about national life? This article argues that a relatively coherent discourseabout the changing nation ran through the two events, a discourse that made thenation visible to itself, in a particular form that captured something of the aspirationsand the anxieties of nineteen-sixties Japan. Both events thus reflected and helped toshape the ongoing discourse of Japanese nationalism. At the same time, the Olympicsand Expo had much more than symbolic and discursive significance. Theydemonstrated and also strengthened the process of national integration that wasgathering pace in the nineteen-sixties. Large-scale participation by Japanese peoplein these huge events, whether directly and personally or through the mediumof television, was only possible in the first place because of sophisticated networks oftransport and communications. By the same token, the events themselves contributedto the expansion of such networks and the further integration of people all over Japaninto national life. Study of the Tokyo Olympics and Expo ’70 also suggests that eventsof this kind provide an opportunity for states to present themselves in positive termsto their own populations.The public festivals staged in 1964 and 1970 probably helpedto normalize the state again in Japan: to present it not as the coercive instrument it hadbeen in the war years and even since, but as a provider of prosperity and status, bothof which were reflected and bolstered in the enjoyable spectacles the state was able toorganize as a result.

In the nineteen-sixties neither stability nor unity was to be taken for granted inJapan. Only four years before the Olympics, renewal of the mutual security treatybetween Japan and the U.S.A., which had been first signed in 1951, had producedsocial and political disruption on a massive scale, in the same year as a long, bitter andultimately violent strike by coalminers on the southern island of Kyushu. In thisdecade, however, while poverty, division and the lingering effects of war remainedimportant parts of the social, cultural, political and economic landscape, new collectiveimages were beginning to emerge. Rapid economic growth was having clear effects: onthe appearance of cities and the provision of infrastructure, and, after a considerablelag, in increasing standards of living. The Second World War was receding, althoughcertainly not forgotten, and a new generation born since Japan’s defeat was reachingmaturity. Internationally, Japan had joined the United Nations and the Organisation forEconomic Co-operation and Development (O.E.C.D.) and was participating activelyin world trade. Undeniably, Japan had changed dramatically since the war. The extentto which Japanese people were conscious of such changes, however, and the degree towhich they may have identified with them, are more difficult to assess.

The eighteenth Olympic Games and Expo ’70, which was technically a universaland international exhibition held as one of the series that had begun with the GreatExhibition in London in 1851, provided the opportunity to showcase the new Japanand its achievements to the world, in the largest staged events held in the country sincethe war. It was the first time either an Olympics or a World’s Fair had been held inAsia. In both cases, however, there had been earlier plans to stage the event in Japan.Tokyo had been invited to host the 1940 Olympics, and arrangements had also beenwell underway for the staging of a World’s Fair, again in 1940. In both cases, warintervened and the events were cancelled.

The Tokyo Olympics and Expo ’70 provided major opportunities for Japanesegovernment, both national and local, as well as industry and other interests, to present

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Copyright © 2011 Institute of Historical Research Historical Research, vol. 85, no. 227 (February 2012)

new images of the nation and of their own separate activities, and in particular toshow Japan in a positive light after the years of war, occupation, economic struggle andinternal division. The two events constituted spectacular international performances.More than 5,000 athletes represented ninety-three countries at the Olympics, whileseventy-seven nations, four international organizations, three U.S. states, three Canadianprovinces, two U.S. cities, one German city and two overseas corporations participatedin Expo ’70 by constructing pavilions containing various kinds of displays andactivities. In addition there were thirty-two Japanese pavilions: one represented theJapanese government, one the combined local governments, two represented publicenterprises, and twenty-eight represented private companies.2

Thus it may seem that the true significance of the two events lies in the vision ofJapan they promoted to the outside world. Undoubtedly this was crucial in manypeople’s eyes. On the other hand, by far the great majority of consumers of the eventsof 1964 and 1970 were Japanese. Of the 64 million people who attended Expo ’70during the six months it was open, a new record for world expositions, only 1.7million were recorded as ‘foreign’: 97.4 per cent of the visitors were Japanese.3 Only50,000 foreign visitors came to Japan for the Olympics rather than the expected130,000, but 65 million people around the country, or the equivalent of nearly seventyper cent of the total population, are estimated to have watched the opening ceremonyon television.4 Arguably, therefore, the images of Japan on show in the Olympics andat Expo ’70 are significant chiefly for their potential influence on a domestic audience.

The message of the two events was not always about ‘nation’.The Olympics celebratesthe achievements of individual athletes. It also represents a universalistic ideal ofhumanity and peace, which was expressed in Tokyo as in other Games in various ways.Conversely, moreover, every Olympic Games centres on a particular city, and in thatsense is local rather than national. For former prime minister Yoshida Shigeru,5 theOlympics provided an opportunity to reconstruct Tokyo; like others before him, heaspired to make Tokyo an ‘ideal city’.6 Expo ’70 can also be read as an expression ofregionalism, with the Osaka authorities keen to show that their city could put on asgood a show as Tokyo had in 1964. In practice, however, the Olympics and the Expoboth centred on nations much more strongly than on any other entities.

The focus on nations was obvious in the case of the Olympics, with its athletesclearly representing their individual nations, even as the Games expressed aninternationalist ideal.The athletes were recognized formally only as members of theirnational teams, and their victories were heralded by national anthems and nationalflags. At the opening ceremony they paraded in national groups. In Tokyo as at otherGames the international symbols of the Olympics were juxtaposed with nationalsymbols in the opening ceremony, but ‘without contravening’ the symbols of

2 Commemorative Organization for the Japan World Exposition ’70 <http://www.expo70.or.jp/e/> [accessed11 Sept. 2006].

3 Hando Kazutoshi, Showashi: sengohen 1945–89 (Tokyo, 2006), p. 523; Official Report of the Japan WorldExposition, Osaka, 1970 (Commemorative Association for the Japan World Exposition, 3 vols., Osaka, 1972), i. 13.

4 Kobayashi Kazuo,‘Tokyo Orinpikku’, in Sengoshi daijiten, ed. Sasaki Takeshi and others (Tokyo, 1991), p. 651;Hatano Masaru, Tokyo Orinpikku e no haruka na michi: shochi katsudo no kiseki 1930–64 (Tokyo, 2004), p. 7.

5 In this article, Japanese names are given with surname first, in accordance with Japanese custom, except infootnotes in the case of authors writing in English who have chosen to use the Western order.

6 Hatano, p. 239. For plans to reconstruct Tokyo after the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, seeJ. C. Schencking, ‘Catastrophe, opportunism, contestation: the fractured politics of reconstructing Tokyofollowing the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923’, Modern Asian Stud., xl (2006), 833–74.

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nation-states.7 The Tokyo Olympics was formally opened by the emperor, whoapparently told U.S. ambassador Edwin O. Reischauer that it was the first time he hadattended a public spectacle since 1957, when he and the empress had attended a kabukiperformance.8 The appearance of the emperor was a reminder that despite the greatwatershed of war, defeat and occupation, and despite all the economic progress sincethen, the ‘nation’ was still a familiar one: ‘The very same emperor, who had broadcasthis country’s surrender less than two decades before, now greeted the countries of theworld with pride’.9

In the case of Expo ’70, it was the national government which applied in 1965 tothe Bureau International des Expositions to host the event, and which formally invitedthe foreign participants. The most important planning decisions, too, were made atnational level.10 In the preparatory stage, there had been an explicit debate overwhether the exposition was to be labelled as an Osaka or a Japanese event; it wasdecided that it should not be considered a local affair.11 Prime Minister Sato Eisakuwas president of the exposition, with the crown prince as honorary president. Thepageantry of the opening ceremony resembled that of the Olympics, especially inits emphasis on national symbols. Once again, the emperor officially opened theexposition, on 14 March 1970, accompanied by the empress, the crown prince andprincess, and Princess Mikasa, the wife of the emperor’s younger brother. It was thefirst time the imperial family had attended a ceremony together since the Olympics.The prime minister made a speech; flags of the participating nations were ‘escorted inby charming hostesses dressed in native costumes’.12 The exposition itself consistedmostly of ‘national’ pavilions, and there was also a series of ‘National Days’, on whichthe particular arts and culture of the nation concerned were displayed and enacted ina central venue, with official receptions held for visiting dignitaries associated with thatcountry. In all, eight presidents, nine prime ministers and eight members of royalfamilies are reported to have visited the exposition.13

From Japan’s point of view the two spectacles were essentially state projects, theplanning for which stretched from the early nineteen-fifties to 1970. One followedclosely on the other: the Japanese government’s commitment to Expo ’70 was madein November 1964, the month after the Tokyo Olympics. The government certainlytreated both the Olympics and the Expo as opportunities to put Japan on show,and, indeed, to encourage patriotism among its own people. Thus schools receivedinstructions about how to use the two events to stimulate patriotism among pupils, andexhibits in the Japan Pavilion at the Expo were designed specifically to encouragepride in all Japanese visitors.

Three points stand out in the discourse of the Japanese nation that was common tothe two events. First, Japan was presented confidently as a nation that had recoveredfrom the Second World War, so much so that it was now not only equal to others, butactually at the forefront of the international scene. Its position at the cutting edge wassupposed to be evident in terms of science and technology; of commitment to human

7 J. J. MacAloon, ‘Olympic Games and the theory of spectacle in modern societies’, in Rite, Drama, Festival,Spectacle: Rehearsals Toward a Theory of Cultural Performance, ed. J. J. MacAloon (Institute for the Study of HumanIssues, Philadelphia, Pa., 1984), pp. 252–3.

8 M. Low, Japan on Display: Photography and the Emperor (2006), p. 135.9 Low, p. 104.

10 See Yoshimi Shun’ya, Banpaku genso: sengo seiji no jubaku (Tokyo, dxxvi, 2005), pp. 25–6.11 Official Report of the Japan World Exposition, p. 48.12 Bankokuhaku gurafu, iii (Apr. 1970), 1–2. English in original.13 Nihon bankoku hakurankai Nihonkan un’ei hokokusho (Tokyo, 1971), p. 208.



values; and even, this author would argue, in terms of the social and environmentalproblems that Japan was experiencing. Second, and notwithstanding this emphasis onits new, changed status, the Japan on show in 1964 and 1970 was repositioning itself inregional and world terms as the representative or even the champion of Asia, or of thenon-Western world more generally. It is not clear whether this implied competitionwith the People’s Republic of China, whose official rhetoric sometimes made thesame claim for China, but it certainly did entail a return to older emphases on Japanas a bridge between East and West.Third, the Japan that was formally displayed in theOlympics and in Expo ’70 was emphatically a unified nation, one that in the officialrhetoric had moved beyond sectionalism and beyond regionalism.

All of these themes in some way recall the official concerns of the Meiji period(1868–1912). There is a sense, indeed, in which the governments planning the eventsof 1964 and 1970 almost seem to have been trying to put Japan back on the Meijitrack, after the catastrophic derailments of the intervening periods. To do so was toresume a story of increasing modernization, internationalization and internal unity, andof rising prestige in the world. It may have been at least partly a conscious effort: in1965 the Japanese authorities had supposedly proposed 1970 as the year for anexposition on the grounds that it was about 100 years since the Meiji Restoration of1868, which was credited with ending Japan’s ‘isolation’ and putting the nation on thepath to modernity and internationalization.14 Further, as we will see below, there wasa marked disinclination to acknowledge the war period in the official treatments ofJapan’s history offered to visitors to the exposition.

Undoubtedly, as Yoshikuni Igarashi has pointed out, the memory of the Second WorldWar haunted the Tokyo Olympics. There was a powerful sense of completing theunfinished business begun with the plans for the aborted 1940 Games.The war itself,moreover, was still very much in people’s minds.Wartime metaphors were often usedin commentary on the Games: the Olympics was likened to a ‘sacred war’ (seisen), forexample.15 Such metaphors were deployed again in 1970. Commentators equatedpreparations for both the Olympics and the Expo with kokka sodoin, or the wartimemobilization of the population by the state.16

As Igarashi says, there was also a connection between the Olympics and warmemory in the positive sense of erasing or balancing the pain of war with the displayof modernity that the Olympics represented.17 The official website of the InternationalOlympic Committee noted until recently that ‘The Japanese expressed their successfulreconstruction after World War II’ in choosing as the person to light the Olympic flamea student born in Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, the day the atom bomb was dropped.18

The main Olympic venue itself, the stadium, was loaded with war memory, havingbeen built on the site on which over 20,000 students newly conscripted into themilitary had gathered, in the same month twenty-one years before, for a farewell

14 E.g., Official Report of the Japan World Exposition, pp. 8, 34.15 Y. Igarashi, Bodies of Memory: Narratives of War in Postwar Japanese Culture, 1945–70 (Princeton, N.J., 2000),

p. 143. On the ‘missing Olympics’ of 1940, see Kikauten: ‘Ganbare! Nippon!’ Gogai wa kataru: futatsu no TokyoOrinpikku, ed.Arakawaku kyoiku iinkai (Tokyo, 2000); Hatano, ch. 2; S. Collins, The 1940 Tokyo Games: the MissingOlympics. Japan, the Asian Olympics and the Olympic Movement (2007).

16 See, e.g., Hariu Ichiro, ‘Hashigaki’, in Wareware ni totte Banpaku to wa nanika, ed. Hariu Ichiro (Tokyo, 1969),pp. 1–4, at p. 1.

17 Igarashi, pp. 143–6.18 Official Website of the Olympic Movement <http://www.olympic.org/en/content/Olympic-Games/

All-Past-Olympic-Games/Summer/Tokyo-1964-summer-olympics> [accessed 11 Sept. 2006].



ceremony before their departure for the front. As the press did not fail to point out,however, much had happened since then, and the Olympics was the signal that Japanhad returned to the world community.19 One mass daily newspaper provided ananecdote about both the connection with and the distance from the war, reporting onan ex-soldier from Okinawa who visited Tokyo with his wife during the Olympics.Asthey gazed at the huge new stadium, the woman was critical of the vast amount ofmoney that had obviously been spent.The ex-soldier, however, chided his wife for hercriticism. For him, the important thing was that Japan, despite its defeat in war, hadbeen able to produce such an impressive building.20 In a decade in which economicgrowth represented ‘an encompassing vision of national purpose and peacetimeredemption’,21 the Olympics thus confirmed a trajectory of progress and recovery fromthe war, as well as signalling Japan’s re-entry into the community of nations.

The Olympics, argues Uchida Takeo, even allowed many Japanese to feel detachedfrom the war; ‘to re-evaluate and reconsider “Japan” and “Japanese”, free from a closeassociation with the war experience’.22 On one level, the Olympics constituted a stateproject to restore national prestige, beginning with the planning stages in thenineteen-fifties.23 After 1945, overt patriotism had seemed something of a taboo, withits connections to a state and nation that had caused so much damage to its neighboursand its own people in the cause of a lost war.To many, internationalism and pacifismhad seemed the only proper or feasible course. Official efforts to stimulate patriotismnow targeted schoolchildren in particular.The ministry of education, which since 1945had left the content of ethics classes to teachers’ discretion, distributed guidelinesbefore the Olympics containing clear instructions to include specific things, of which‘patriotism’ was one, at the same time encouraging patriotic content in other subjectslike social studies and composition as well.24

Commentators did discern a new national consciousness. During the Olympics,powerful symbols of the nation were constantly deployed, most notably the flag andanthem. As one observer wrote:We were [previously] obsessed by the strange illusion that it was desirable to lose our nationalcharacter and become internationalists.We thought that those who discarded our national flagand anthem were liberated internationalists . . . The two-week-long Olympic Games cultivatedthe Japanese national consciousness among the people.25

According to another critic, thanks to the Olympics, ‘the Japanese people . . . havebeen liberated from an unfounded national and racial inferiority complex’.26 A thirdnoted that for most Japanese people, the national flag had acquired negativeconnotations because of the Second World War, and affection for the flag as symbolof the state (kokka) had weakened. The Olympics, she thought, had been a goodopportunity to rectify this.27

19 Asahi kuronikuru: shukan 20 seiki, xx (1964), 3.20 ‘Orinpikku Tokyo taikai: Nihonjin no kokoro ni nokoshita mono. Manabi totta shinsedai’, Asahi shinbun,

evening edn., 24 Oct. 1964 (in Dokyumento sengo no Nihon – shinbun nyusu ni miru dai jiten, xlv: Tokyo orinpikku(Tokyo, 1998), p. 264).

21 S. O’Bryan, The Growth Idea: Purpose and Prosperity in Postwar Japan (Honolulu, 2009), p. 173.22 Uchida Takeo, ‘Perceptions of the state in post-war Japan’, in The State and Cultural Transformation:

Perspectives from East Asia, ed. Hirano Keni’ichiro (Tokyo, 1993), pp. 179–95, at p. 184.23 Hatano, p. 239.24 Kobayashi, p. 651.25 Sakanishi Shiho, in Asahi shinbun, 26 Oct. 1964 (quoted and translated in Uchida, pp. 183–4).26 Okuno Takeo, in Yomiuri shinbun (quoted and translated in Uchida, p. 183).27 Hirabayashi Taiko, ‘Kokka ishiki to ningen’, Yomiuri shinbun, 27 Oct. 1964 (repr. in Tokyo Orinpikku:

bungakusha no mita seiki no saiten (Tokyo, 1964), p. 262).



Expo ’70, too, was intended to generate confidence among the Japanese people, andto suggest new roles for Japan in the world of the future.Yoshimi Shun’ya writes thatthe exposition represented a ‘collective image’ for Japanese people, confirming oncemore that their society had achieved a high level of economic growth.28 Evidently theJapanese government felt that people needed reminding of this: it consciously set outnot only to enhance the world’s understanding of Japan through the exposition, butalso to give the Japanese ‘positive aspirations and deep pride’ (akarui kibo to takai hokori)in the nation,29 especially through the displays in the Japan Pavilion, the biggest of allthe exposition’s pavilions. The implication in official written materials on both theOlympics and Expo ’70 that Japanese people needed to be made proud of theircountry, and the apparent assumption that such pride was lacking, suggest a certaindefensiveness on the part of the government. It may be that the government wasconcerned with recovering national pride not only after defeat in war, but also after theenormous social and political disruption of the 1960 campaign to oppose the renewalof the security treaty with the U.S.A. Schoolchildren were again a particular target.The ministry of education specifically instructed teachers to encourage children tohave consciousness of and pride in themselves as members of the host nation of the1970 exposition, although this exhortation to national pride was balanced by anotherinjunction to promote children’s confidence and courage as members of the humanrace, and to stimulate their interest in science and the arts.30

The official theme of ‘Japan and the Japanese’ in the Japan Pavilion was apparentlyintended to encourage people to ‘rediscover’ the true energy of the nation and itspeople, in the context of a long traditional culture, but also to reposition that energyin the present and for the future.31 In the end, such a project evidently required thealmost complete excision of the Second World War from the national story. Thehistorical display in the pavilion jumped from Meiji to the present, eliminatingvirtually all reference to the conflict – in contrast to the original plans of the themecommittee, which had intended to include photographs and objects relating to theatomic bombings and the conflict – to give priority to economic growth and Japan’sstatus as the country with the second-highest Gross National Product (G.N.P.) in the‘free world’.32 Reference to the atomic bombings remained only in very muted form.In the nineteen-sixties Japan’s nuclear capacity was growing rapidly amidstconsiderable local protest; nuclear energy was thus a divisive but very live issue.33

Accordingly, the Japan Pavilion displayed two ‘Atomic Towers’, accompanied by thiscomment:‘Atomic power, if rightly used, will give us splendid power. It can enrich ourlife and give us high hopes’.The two towers were the ‘Tower of Sorrow’, presumablyrepresenting Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the ‘Tower of Joy’.34 There was also a‘tapestry showing the disaster caused by [the] atomic bomb’.35 Overall, although there

28 Yoshimi, Banpaku genso, p. 36.29 Nihon bankoku hakurankai, p. 1.30 EXPO ’70: Nihon bankoku haku shido no tame ni, ed. Monbusho (Tokyo, 1970), pp. 39–41.31 Nihon bankoku hakurankai, p. 5.32 Yoshimi, Banpaku genso, p. 59.33 See S. H. Lesbirel, NIMBY Politics in Japan: Energy Siting and the Management of Environmental Conflict (Ithaca,

N.Y., 1998), p. 61.34 Ministry of International Trade and Industry, Japan External Trade Organization, Japan and the Japanese: the

Japanese Pavilion (pamphlet, with foreword by Prime Minister Sato Eisaku) (hereafter Japan and the Japanese),p. 23; see also Monbusho, p. 69.

35 See photograph in Expo ’70 hairaito arubamu: jinrui no shinpo to chowa (Tokyo, 1970) (hereafter Expo ’70hairaito arubamu), p. 37. English in original.



was much talk of the exposition’s main official theme, ‘progress and harmony formankind’, and of overcoming ‘disharmony’ in world affairs through the ‘wisdom ofhumankind’, in practice the emphasis in the Japanese exhibits in Osaka was firmly on‘progress’ and on Japan’s own achievements.36

The stress on growth and prosperity was to an extent misleading in its implications.Expo ’70 may have celebrated ‘the dream of growth’ (seicho no yume); however, whilesuch visions probably encapsulated the desires of a large number,Yoshimi points outthat they also shut out many others, who were too poor to participate fully in the newprosperity.37 For one group of young British observers, the rhetoric of the advancednation contrasted sharply with what they saw of actual living conditions, and theevident unevenness of Japanese economic development came as a considerable shock.They commented years afterwards:

The huge number of farmers who visited the Expo, many of the older ones with bent backsfrom nutritional deficiencies, appeared to us not as the counterparts of our own prosperousfarming community, but as ‘peasants’ deformed by years of unrelenting toil of a kind withwhich even the poorer members of the British working class were no longer familiar.38

Leftist Japanese critics, for their part, refused to believe that the exposition wouldbenefit workers; rather, it would actually harm them, because of forced land acquisitionfor the site, the increase in traffic and in the number of accidents, crowding, pollutionfrom the expressways, and high prices for everything at the exposition itself.39

Orthodox discourses naturally omitted such themes, concentrating on the story ofgrowth and progress. In the official rendition of the nation in 1970, Japan had gone farbeyond overcoming the war; it had moved right up to the forefront internationally. Asnoted earlier, the Japanese authorities had apparently proposed 1970 as the year foran exposition in order to commemorate the (approximate) centenary of the MeijiRestoration. Some left-wing critics dismissed this justification as a ruse, declaring thatthe Expo was really a capitalist plot designed to distract people’s attention from thesecond renewal of the U.S.-Japan security treaty, due in the same year.40 The officialview, however, was that Japan had only now reached a point where it was feasible tohost an international exposition:

The host country [of a World Exposition] is not only required to be financially capable oflaying out the enormous sums involved in the preparation and holding of such a majorinternational event but must possess wide-ranging and advanced technology as well as a liberalsocial system that guarantees the maintenance of a highly developed civilization and its furtherprogress. Because invitations to foreign countries are sent out through the governmentchannels, the host nation must have diplomatic relations with the majority of world nations . . .

After the end of World War II, Japan made a fresh start as a peace-loving nation. With herattainment of high economic and cultural standards, and with a rise in her position in thecommunity of nations, Japan became qualified 20 years after the close of the war to host auniversal and international exhibition.41

36 Yoshimi, Banpaku genso, pp. 48–50, 56–9.37 Yoshimi, Banpaku genso, p. 10.38 L. Connors, L. Gomersall, J. Hunter and A. Kaneko, ‘Expo ’70: seven months in Japan’, in Japan Experiences:

Fifty Years, One Hundred Views. Post-War Japan through British Eyes 1945–2000, ed. H. Cortazzi (Richmond, 2001),pp. 222–3; also conversation with Janet Hunter, Sept. 2006.

39 See, e.g., ’70nen Bankokuhaku no kyozo: sono nerai to toshi jumin no seikatsu, ed. Jichitai mondai kenkyujo,Bankokuhaku kenkyukai and Suita-shi shokuin rodo kumiai (Tokyo, 1970).

40 Hariu Ichiro, ‘Minshu fuzai no saiten’, in Wareware ni totte Banpaku to wa nanika, ed. Hariu Ichiro (Tokyo,1969), pp. 11–21, at pp. 15–16.

41 Official Report of the Japan World Exposition, p. 8.



In both 1964 and 1970, there was an enormous sense of confidence in the powersof science and technology. Such confidence was displayed not only in exhibits andwritten materials, but also in the actual facilities constructed for the two events.As oneyoung Australian worker at Expo said many years later, ‘the emphasis on science andtechnology and on a revitalised Japan was very clear. You could practically feel thepride in the air’.42 The bullet train from Tokyo to Osaka was inaugurated just in timefor the Olympics; as Morris Low has commented, it was seen as ‘a symbol of themodernisation of Japanese railroads, and in a broader sense, Japan itself ’.43 A monorailwas also built between Haneda airport and central Tokyo. The Tokyo MetropolitanExpressway network, constructed for the Olympics, utterly transformed parts of thecity. For Expo ’70, another monorail, capable of moving 13,000 people every hour, wasbuilt to transport visitors to the site.44 In the industrial pavilions there were displays offuturistic homes and various kinds of robots, all representing the idea of a prosperousfuture. In addition to its monorail, the exposition site itself was notable for itsstate-of-the-art computer system, moving walkways, electric cars and air-conditionedpavilions.Thus the site and the space themselves became exhibits, according toYoshimi,and ultimately it was the ‘future city’ (mirai toshi) made possible by the latest technologythat defined Expo ’70, rather than the presentation of the theme ‘progress andharmony for mankind’. Fundamentally, the exposition became a very effectiveadvertising medium for the achievements of Japanese industry.45

The theme of science and technology was especially evident in the Osaka exhibits,although certainly not only in Japan’s displays: space science was a major topic, and inan atmosphere of intense Cold War rivalry between the Soviet Union and the U.S.A.,the Soviet Pavilion included the spaceship Soyuz, while one of the major drawcardsof the entire exposition was the piece of moon rock in the U.S. Pavilion, brought backthe year before by the Apollo 11 astronauts. Astronauts from the Apollo 12 mission of1969 actually visited the exposition, travelling by presidential jet to do so.46 Theorganizers of the Japanese displays, however, undoubtedly were eager to showcaseJapan’s own specific achievements. As one official guide to the Japan Pavilionproclaimed, in an echo of much older concerns about Japan’s ‘rank’ among the nations:

The standard of science and technology today is regarded as the barometer of the nationalpower of a country. Now that her science and technology have taken long strides, Japan isranked among the world’s most advanced countries . . . There will be no bounds to the futuredevelopment of Japanese science and technology.47

So great was the confidence in science that one Japanese exhibition catalogueproclaimed that thanks to satellites, ‘in the next fifty years, our weather control squadwill be able to extinguish raging typhoons’.48 The positive mood extended to theeconomy as well; the same catalogue endorsed a claim from an unnamed source thatJapan would catch up with the U.S. economically within twenty years.49

42 Personal communication (name of informant withheld by request), 3 Aug. 2006.43 Low, p. 103.44 Bankokuhaku gurafu, iii (March 1970), 14.45 Yoshimi, Banpaku genso, pp. 76–9.46 Bankokuhaku gurafu, iii (Apr. 1970), 29, 32–3; ‘“Tsuki otoko” Bankokuhaku ni chakuritsu’, Tokyo asahi

shinbun, 24 March 1970, evening edn., p. 10.47 Japan and the Japanese, p. 21.48 Expo ’70 hairaito arubamu, p. 37.49 Expo ’70 hairaito arubamu, p. 14.



On the other hand, Japan was also said to be in the lead in focusing attention on thehuman values that must accompany technological progress.The Expo presented Japanas a peaceful nation, opposed to war and committed to universal values. The strongimplication was that Japan had a long tradition of internationalism, which had beenunfortunately but briefly interrupted by war.50 The Japanese organizing committeehad chosen the slogan, ‘progress and harmony for mankind’. As the official report ofthe exposition explained, this theme was meant to direct attention not only totechnological progress, but also to ‘the stresses and strains produced in the course ofprogress’, meaning principally international tensions.The choice of the theme was thus‘an attempt to elevate to a higher level the common concern for the restorationof humanity to which all World Expositions since the end of World War II hadunanimously been dedicated’.51

International tensions were not the only costs of progress, and materials on theexposition frankly admitted the destructive power of science and the underside ofhigh economic growth in Japan.52 Undoubtedly, as some participants in Expo ’70 havenoted in retrospect, emphasis on problems like pollution and overcrowding did reflectuncertainty about Japan’s place and role in the world.53 Anxiety about such problems,however, somehow does not quite ring true in the official materials.There is a sneakingsense that even the problems brought by high economic growth might fundamentallybe sources of pride; for after all, land degradation and urban pollution were themarkers of a highly advanced and industrialized society, at least in this analysis – andthere was confidence that they would be responsibly addressed, on behalf of the restof the industrialized world as well as Japan, by that same highly advanced society.Pollution would be overcome by ‘man’s wisdom and scientific technology’.54 Thus,paradoxically, problems like pollution provided another opportunity for the display ofJapanese leadership.

The idea of environmental ‘pollution’ was itself fairly new in 1970, the year of the‘pollution Diet’ (kogai Kokkai) in Japan, when an earlier anti-pollution law wasstrengthened and a number of new laws to control pollution were passed.The youngworkers who later wrote their reminiscences of the British Pavilion, all of whom werestudents in Japanese studies degrees at the time, had not heard the word before theywent to Osaka in 1970, either in English or in Japanese.55 ‘Pollution’ itself, then, was acutting-edge concept. As one official document claimed, furthermore, the displays inthe Japan Pavilion demonstrated the conquest of pollution, and the ways in which theJapanese people were supposedly striving, through a new sense of discipline, totransform high population density in large cities into even more productive energythan had been evident in the past. Expo ’70 allegedly showed the earnest andmeticulous planning with which pollution, housing problems and other issues werebeing tackled.56 Thus, pollution and other social costs of economic growth were

50 E.g., Official Report of the Japan World Exposition, p. 8.51 Official Report of the Japan World Exposition, p. 59. On the consciousness of international tensions, see

Yoshimi, Banpaku genso, pp. 48–50.52 See, e.g., Official Report of the Japan World Exposition, p. 10.53 Connors and others, pp. 223–4.54 Japan and the Japanese, p. 15.55 Connors and others, p. 224; also conversation with Janet Hunter, Sept. 2006.56 Monbusho, pp. 62, 67.



somehow connected with national vigour, becoming backhanded reasons forself-congratulation in the process.

Not all of the dominant discourse about Japan and the Japanese surrounding theOlympics and Expo ’70 was new. Official publications and other materials made muchof the fact that Japan was hosting the first Asian Olympics and also Asia’s first WorldExposition.This regional perspective then allowed for a return to much older emphaseson Japan as a bridge between East and West, and on Japan as representative of Asiaor more broadly of the non-Western world. A self-conscious Asianness was thusjuxtaposed with an image of Japan as a modern,Westernized country at the forefrontof science and technology.

The focus on Asian leadership was most evident in 1970.Yoshimi has pointed outthat the Expo was in many ways biased towards the West – in its emphasis on Westernorchestras, opera and ballet rather than Asian art forms, for example, and in the longdelay in inviting the People’s Republic of China to participate.57 Much attention wasalso paid, however, to the unprecedentedly high level of participation by Asian andAfrican countries, and the means by which this was made possible: for instance, theprovision of a joint pavilion in which smaller and poorer countries could mountdisplays at a comparatively low cost each. Overshadowing this emphasis, however, wasthe focus on Japan’s own supposedly unique role as a bridge between the two worlds.

The official report on Expo ’70 explained that the event represented an attempt ‘tobring back to the present the spirit of “Wa (oneness)” of Oriental philosophy, and todevelop it into a bridge linking East and West’.58 Such a comment brings to mind theearly twentieth-century rhetoric of the leading public intellectuals Okakura Tenshinand Nitobe Inazo, both of whom sought to define Japan’s role in the world and in itsregion, and considered that Japan had a unique role in representing Asia and bridgingEast and West. Prime Minister Sato Eisaku wrote in one English-language guide to theJapan Pavilion, in words that again seem to represent a combination of Okakura’s andNitobe’s pronouncements of decades before: ‘With her people’s intrinsic energy andcreative genius Japan has assimilated the cultures of the East and the West in the longspan of her history and formed and developed a culture all her own.’59 The ministryof education’s handbook containing material on Expo for use in the classroomrecommended that children be made to appreciate Japan’s role as a bridge betweenEast and West.60 In fact,‘fusion of eastern and western cultures’ (tosei bunka no yugo) hadbeen the theme proposed for the 1940 Expo, which, officially, was never cancelled butonly ‘postponed’.61

What was being flagged here was no narrow conception of Japanese culture, butsomething much broader, and also something that could still imply a critique of theWest, just as pre-war and wartime discourses on the ‘uniqueness’ of Japanese culturehad done. As the official report again noted:

The Japan World Exposition being the first of its kind ever held in Asia, cultural achievementsof Asian,African and Latin-American countries were presented as proudly as those of Europeanand North American countries. It was really opportune that Expo ’70 set a stage for the

57 Yoshimi, Banpaku genso, pp. 93–4.58 Official Report of the Japan World Exposition, p. 9.59 Japan and the Japanese, foreword.60 Monbusho, pp. 21, 41.61 Yoshimi, Banpaku genso, pp. 42–3.



exchange of thoughts of different orders and traditions at a time when the rationalism of theOccident, in a sense, was fraught with dilemmas.62

Why the ‘rationalism of the Occident’ was ‘fraught with dilemmas’ is left unexplained,but it may have been an indirect reference to the Vietnam War: American soldierson leave from Vietnam were among the visitors to the Expo.63 The left-wing criticof Expo ’70 mentioned earlier, on the other hand, dismissed the emphasis on the‘philosophy of “wa”’ as a sop to unsuspecting foreign and domestic visitors, hiding theexposition’s real agenda, which he believed was all about profit and was directed atindustrial interests.64 All the same, it is very striking how powerful and enduring thediscourses of Asian oneness and Japan as the leader or representative of Asia andperhaps of the whole non-Western world had proved to be.The thesis that such ideaswere a significant part of the path to war is a familiar one; but evidently they couldbe recycled for other purposes after 1945. It was perhaps important for the Japan thatwas on display in 1964 and 1970 to remain identifiably ‘Oriental’, however modern itmight also be. An emphasis on old stereotypes of a kind that could be expected toappeal to Westerners is clearly evident, for example, in the way that medals werepresented to the winners of the track and field and other contests at the Olympics (seeFigure 1): by young women of ‘traditional’ demeanour, wearing kimono and requiredto be unmarried. They were apparently referred to as ‘Miss Medal’ or ‘medalcompanions’.65

It has been suggested here that the organizers of the Olympics and of Expo ’70 may notactually have felt as much anxiety about the internal social and environmental problemsbrought by high economic growth as their public protestations would indicate. On theother hand, there was a different issue about which they do seem to have been genuinelyanxious: the old spectre of disunity in the nation. Reporting on the Olympics probablystimulated a sense of national unity in a positive cause, in contrast to the unity demandedand sometimes coerced by the state in wartime, and the fragmentation of defeat.Theauthorities, however, did not take it for granted that people and institutions would unitearound national goals. Hando Kazutoshi believes the Olympics played a large role inuniting the Japanese people through a shared sense that Japan had finally left its status asa defeated nation behind to become a member of the international community.66 In themiddle and later nineteen-sixties the Sato Eisaku government remained convinced,however, of the need for a stronger national consciousness, partly so that people wouldhave a greater willingness to defend their country.67

Official materials on Expo ’70 were overtly concerned with the issue of unity,stating firmly and often that the exposition was marked by a high degree ofco-operation among local governments, among different occupational groups, andamong sections of government. Such a strong emphasis on Japan as a unified nationcertainly suggests there had been reason to expect the opposite. As the official reporton the exposition noted:

62 Official Report of the Japan World Exposition, p. 14.63 Connors and others, p. 226.64 Hariu, ‘Minshu fuzai no saiten’, p. 21.65 The photograph is from ‘Sekai no naka no Nippon’, Mainichi shinbun, 18 Oct. 1964, p. 15. See also ‘Tokyo

gorin no hana – konpanion to Misu Medaru – Ninki no mato wa furisode’, Asahi shinbun, evening edn., 18 Oct.1964, p. 8.

66 Hando, p. 490.67 Uchida, p. 184.



Expo ’70 had many effects upon Japan . . . The most conspicuous of them was the‘coordination of efforts’ in every phase of this national enterprise – in the stage of itspreparations as well as in its administration and operation.The monolithic solidarity of all thoseconcerned in realizing the Japan World Exposition and in making it a great success set a goodprecedent for future large-scale projects which will require coordination among people ofdifferent backgrounds.

The National Diet, political parties, Government, local public entities, private organizationsand corporations made cooperative efforts, moving across the barriers that ordinarily separatedthem.68

68 Official Report of the Japan World Exposition, p. 14.

Figure 1. Miss Medal, from ‘Sekai no naka no Nippon’, Mainichi shinbun, 18 Oct. 1964, Tokyoedition, p. 15. Reprinted by permission of The Mainichi Newspapers Ltd



The report also clearly noted that intellectuals, artists, engineers and others hadco-operated with each other, as had prefectural governments, plus the government ofOkinawa, still at that time under U.S. administration, and the authorities in cities, townsand villages. Business groups, too, ‘transcending individual interests’, had mounted jointprojects to set up domestic pavilions. In short, the spirit of co-operation ‘knew nosectionalism nor regionalism’, a happy outcome attributed in this report not only to‘the demand of our time’ but also to the ‘internationalization of Japanese society’,which had supposedly brought a ‘widening of national vision’.69 Strikingly, there wasno suggestion in the discourse about national unity that class conflict might have beena problem; bureaucratic rivalry was obviously considered much more threatening bythis stage.

The Olympics and the Expo were part of the overall project of renovating post-warJapan, both symbolically and in concrete ways. In themselves they also demonstrate thatnational integration was well underway in the nineteen-sixties. Thanks to projectsassociated with the two events, connections between regions and centre werestrengthened, information spread more quickly and comprehensively, and peopletravelled to Tokyo, Osaka and other cities with greater ease. Any feelings of nationalunity generated by the actual events may well have been ephemeral. The roads andrailways left behind, however, and the increased prominence of television, continued tobind people together for years to come.

Despite the implied concerns of some in positions of authority, Japan was in factbecoming more and more integrated as a nation during the nineteen-fifties and sixties.That integration was both reflected in and reinforced by the spectacles staged in 1964and 1970. As in other industrialized countries at this time, economic growth was theprimary reason for the tighter links between individuals and regions on the one hand,and the centre on the other, for at least three reasons in the case of Japan.

First, macroeconomic growth itself, as Scott O’Bryan has recently noted, was a‘national project’ in Japan, stemming principally from developments at the centre fromthe late nineteen-forties onwards.70 It required national leadership, and in turn itstrengthened that leadership: from the nineteen-sixties to the nineteen-eighties, writesYoshimi, in contrast to the nineteen-fifties, national-level leadership took priority overlocal and regional government, basically because of the strong emphasis in those yearson economic development, symbolized by the income-doubling plan announced byPrime Minister Ikeda Hayato in 1960. Such policies required strong intervention inregional affairs by the centralized state. In the context of rapid economic growth, therewas thus an unprecedented level of activity by central bureaucrats in the economy andin regional policy-making,71 in a manner that recalls the ‘nation-building’ years of theMeiji period.

Second, growth was associated in people’s minds with the national unit, and so itmade them more conscious of the nation. According to O’Bryan, the early post-wartheorists and champions of macroeconomic growth on the whole understood thatit operated on a national level.72 However uneven its effects, economic growth wasevident to all by the nineteen-sixties, and, arguably, was associated with the nationalunit by people at large, not just bureaucrats, academics and politicians. Prosperity, in

69 Official Report of the Japan World Exposition, p. 15.70 O’Bryan, p. 179.71 Yoshimi, Banpaku genso, pp. 15–16.72 O’Bryan, p. 178.



other words, made people aware of the nation, even if they themselves did not yetshare in that prosperity to any great extent.

Third, the concrete effects of economic growth enhanced national unity. In hisinfluential book, Oguma Eiji has identified the second half of the nineteen-fifties asa time when a more genuinely unified national culture than ever before began toemerge, due in large part to the impact of television and advertising, which werethemselves products of economic growth. As Oguma notes, people were beginning toeat the same food and enjoy the same entertainment, whatever part of Japan they livedin, while in any case rural to urban migration was also accelerating.73 Again there wasa psychological effect: as social class appeared to be flattening and the significance ofregion decreased, it became less likely that people would find their primary identity insuch categories.

Public response to the Olympics and the Expo indicates the extent to whichnational integration had progressed by the nineteen-sixties. Surveys of public opinionon the Olympics, for example, showed little or no difference in attitude to the Gamesbetween Tokyo residents and those from elsewhere in Japan: in that sense as well, theOlympics was a ‘national’ event.74 More significantly, both the Expo and the Olympicsclearly played their part in promoting further integration. Sometimes this might havebeen a coincidental result of the events themselves, but at other times it was a matterof deliberate policy.

The Olympics may have been hosted by Tokyo City, but the Japanese governmentcertainly treated the Games as a national undertaking, as commentators’ comparisonswith wartime national mobilization were meant to suggest.The ministry of education,as noted earlier, distributed guidelines on how to stimulate patriotism among pupils. Inmore concrete terms, campaigns were implemented before the Games with the aim ofimproving public behaviour, commercial activity and traffic; and of beautifying Japanphysically. In the interests of public safety during the Olympics, the police began tostep up arrests of people who behaved suspiciously, the mentally ill and troublesomedrunks.75 The British sports journalist Christopher Brasher claimed that ‘One of theJaps’ great worries is that the stray dogs will interfere with the marathon runners, sothey have imported several hundred dog-catchers to chase all the mongrels away’.76 Inthese very practical ways, those preparing for the Olympics sought to mould the nationinto a particular shape, suitable for the world’s gaze.

Tokyo, Osaka and to some extent the whole nation were physically changed by theOlympics and Expo. According to Takayama Eika, facilities adviser for the TokyoOlympiad and member of a committee which drew up blueprints for the newexpressway system, ‘The most dramatic event in the 1964 Olympic Games was not onthe calendar of sports; it was the race Tokyo ran with itself to prepare an outdated citystructure for modern needs’. Railways, freeways, hotels and recreation complexeswere built, and not just in Tokyo itself. Sports facilities and athletes’ villages were alsodistributed among prefectures neighbouring Tokyo, including Chiba, Saitama andKanazawa, as equestrian events, yacht racing, canoeing and cycling were all heldoutside the capital. Thus, the Olympics not only transformed the city of Tokyo,

73 Oguma Eiji, ‘Minshu’ to ‘aikoku’: sengo Nihon no nashonarizumu to kokyosei (Tokyo, 2002), pp. 293–4.74 Fujitake Akira, Tokyo Orinpikku: sono 5 nenkan no ayumi (Tokyo, 1967), p. 96.75 Kobayashi, p. 651.76 C. Brasher, Tokyo 1964: a Diary of the XVIIIth Olympiad (1964), p. 16.



but contributed to its expansion outwards, and conversely to the incorporation ofneighbouring prefectures into ‘Greater Tokyo’.77

As mentioned earlier, one of the most significant events associated with theOlympics was the inauguration of the bullet train, which began operation just ninedays before the Games started.The shinkansen was not built because of the Olympics;the 1957 announcement that it would be developed was a response to the need forgreater rail capacity for passengers and freight between Tokyo and Osaka.The openingof the Olympics, however, was taken as a strict deadline for completion of theproject.78 Aside from its psychological value as the fastest train in the world and the‘symbol of modern Japan’,79 the new train played a crucial role in enhancing nationalcohesion. Linking major cities at a maximum speed of over 200 kilometres per hour,it cut the trip from Tokyo to Osaka from six hours and forty minutes initially to fourhours, then to three hours and ten minutes by 1965. Day trips between Tokyo andOsaka became possible, and other towns and cities along the route were also linkedinto the new network. By 1967 the bullet train had already carried 100 millionpassengers, ‘bringing even isolated regions and communities into contact with eachother’.80 By 1970 it had carried 300 million passengers, or about three times thepopulation of Japan.81

At the same time, the Olympics and Expo ’70 also promoted integration in moresubtle ways. Partly, it was a matter of showing off the nation to itself, in much the sameway that domestic and international expositions had been doing since the Meijiperiod.82 In the case of Expo ’70, large numbers of Japanese people from all over thecountry travelled to the exhibition site. Maurice Roche has suggested that althoughtelevision has ‘provided a crucial complement to the Olympics [in recent times], addingto the scale and intensity of their dramatic appeal’, it has on the other handundermined World Expositions, because the wealth of information available throughtelevision has made it unnecessary for people to seek knowledge through such means.83

This observation is not borne out in the case of Expo ’70.By 1970, few Japanese households lacked a television set.Yet it has been estimated

that as much as half of the population actually went to the Expo.84 Visitor numbers,at a total of 64 million, far exceeded prior projections, which had been upgraded from35 million to 50 million.85 The average daily attendance was 350,000 people, but thecrowds were especially great during the summer holiday period, rather than at thebeginning of the Expo. In the single month from 15 August to 13 September, whenschools were on holiday, over 17 million visitors arrived. On successive days during thesummer there were over 500,000 visitors, and on one particular day, the gates had tobe closed after more than 800,000 visitors had been let in.86 This was well over the

77 E. Takayama, ‘A late start in a race still unfinished’, This is Japan 1966, xiii (Aug. 1965), 166–7.78 C. P. Hood, Shinkansen: from Bullet Train to Symbol of Modern Japan (2006), pp. 22, 72; Hando, p. 489.79 This is the subtitle of Hood’s book, Shinkansen.80 Low, p. 103.81 Hood, p. 29.82 See Yoshimi Shun’ya, Hakurankai no seijigaku: manazashi no kindai (Tokyo, 1992); S. Wilson, ‘The discourse

of national greatness in Japan, 1890–1919’, Japanese Stud., xxv (2005), 35–51, at pp. 38–40.83 M. Roche, Mega-Events and Modernity: Olympics and Expos in the Growth of Global Culture (2000), pp. 159–60.84 Hando, p. 523;Yoshimi, Banpaku genso, p. 84.85 Nihon bankoku hakurankai, p. 207.86 Official Report of the Japan World Exposition, p. 12; Commemorative Organization for the Japan World

Exposition’70 <http://www.expo70.or.jp/e/> [accessed 21 Oct. 2010]; Nihon bankoku hakurankai, p. 212;Yoshimi,Banpaku geno, pp. 82–3.



entire population of the city of Hiroshima or the city of Sendai at the time. Personalaccounts of the Expo often stress the crowding.Thirteen people died at or outside theExpo, some of them reportedly from heat exhaustion in the queues; because of theheat and congestion, the Expo was nicknamed zankokuhaku, or ‘brutal Expo’, insteadof bankokuhaku (universal exposition). Over 43,000 children were reported lost:fortunately, there was a computerized system for keeping track of them.87 A 1970 filmbyYamadaYoji includes a scene in which the family at its centre tries to visit the Expo.The parents and children spend an inordinate amount of time just getting to the site,and encounter large crowds outside the gates once they arrive. In the end they onlyhave time to peer through the entrance before they have to leave again.88

Many people travelled long distances to attend the Expo. According to the Asahishinbun, the agricultural co-operative (Nokyo) in Toyama prefecture, which is morethan 300 kilometres from Osaka, mobilized a staggering 65,000 of the prefecture’sfarming population of 100,000 to go to the Expo.89 Indeed, official figures claim thattwenty-four per cent of the total population of Toyama prefecture and thirteen otherprefectures located 300–500 kilometres from the exhibition site visited the Expo.90

The length of the bullet train was increased from twelve to sixteen carriages toaccommodate extra passengers coming to Osaka.91 It is clear that travelling to the Expoattracted official approval in the local context. In some places, local notables gatheredat the railway station to see people off to Osaka, in a manner that recalls the departureof troop trains during the war. Many school trips (shugaku ryoko), too, included theExpo in their itineraries.92 The gap between rural and urban visitors still seems to havebeen obvious in some cases. This author’s informant, recalling her experience as ayoung worker in the Australian Pavilion, comments:

Every day we saw dozens of tour groups from various prefectures, some of them looking (andacting) very provincial indeed, and on one memorable occasion I recall that we had todiplomatically prevent a little obaasan [grandmother] from Kyushu from squatting down to peein the stairwell leading down to an emergency exit from the pavilion (the men just hauled offand let the walls have it) . . . I can still see the look of utter amazement (as in ‘why not, forheaven’s sake?’) on the face of the obaasan in question.93

To be sure, not everyone looked carefully at the exhibits. Some visitors, reported theyoung British observers in their later reminiscences, came simply to collect theirpavilion’s commemorative stamp in the Expo ‘passport’. In the heat of the summer,elderly people in particular might come inside to eat the lunches they had broughtin air-conditioned comfort. Many of the visitors in organized groups seemeduninterested in the exhibits.Those working in other pavilions told similar stories. Staffin one pavilion reported that some people came inside, found a cool, dark place andwent to sleep.94 Congestion was part of the problem. On average, visitors reportedlyspent six and a half hours at the site; four and a half hours of this time were apparentlyconsumed waiting in line at various pavilions (and presumably at the toilets), leaving

87 Nihon bankoku hakurankai, pp. 214–15; Bankokuhaku gurafu, iii (March 1970), 41; Connors and others;Yoshimi, Banpaku genso, pp. 82–4.

88 See Yamada Yoji and Miyazaki Akira, ‘Kazoku’, in Nenkan daihyo shinarioshu: 1970 nenpan, ed. Shinario sakkakyokai (Tokyo, 1971), pp. 242–3;Yoshimi, Banpaku genso, pp. 8–10.

89 Asahi shinbun, 9 Sept. 1970 (quoted in Yoshimi, Banpaku genso, p. 87).90 Nihon bankoku hakurankai, p. 213, table 5.91 Hood, p. 29.92 Yoshimi, Banpaku genso, p. 87.93 Personal communication (name of informant withheld ), 3 Aug. 2006, 29 Jan. 2010.94 Connors and others, p. 225;Yoshimi, Banpaku genso, pp. 83–4.



little time to look at the exhibits properly. For some exhibits, there were five-hourqueues.95 Nevertheless, the mere fact that so many tour groups did want to come fromall over Japan to see the exhibits, and could do so, suggests a notable degree of interestin this national project, as well as a high standard of transport and communications.

By contrast, surveys suggest that only seven per cent of Tokyo residents actually wentto see the Olympic sports.96 While this is still a large number of people in absoluteterms, on the whole, television was the medium through which Japanese peopleexperienced the Games, and the Olympics essentially became a media event, as it istoday. The Tokyo Olympics was sometimes called the ‘television games’; according tothe media researcher Fujitake Akira, television broadcasts were the Olympics for mostpeople.97 Perhaps the Tokyo Olympics represents the beginning of this trend, since itwas the first time that live broadcasts of the Games had been seen overseas as well asat home. Many households reportedly bought their first colour television sets to watchthe Olympics. As noted earlier, an estimated 65 million people around Japan, or nearlyseventy per cent of the population, watched the opening ceremony, described byChristopher Brasher as ‘the most impressive ceremony ever staged’ and ‘the mostbrilliantly organized spectacle ever held in international sport’.98 Viewer numbers forthis ceremony suggest that the spectacle itself, with Japan at its centre, was at leastas attractive to viewers as the Olympic sports. A total of eighty-five per cent ofhouseholds with television sets also watched the live telecast of the women’s volleyballfinal, an exciting match in which Japan unexpectedly defeated the Soviet Union.99

Thus, through television, the Games became a shared national experience, or one ofa few key post-war moments of ‘national simultaneity’.100 Most Japanese people wereconsuming the same set of media reports on the Olympics, in a process that mustsurely have played its part in the ongoing production of a more integrated society, aswell as the continued popularity of television, still a new and exciting medium at thistime. The unifying function of the Olympics may have been particularly potent onlyfour years after the crisis surrounding the first renewal of the U.S.-Japan security treatyand the bitter coal strike in Kyushu.101 This is probably what one commentator meantwhen she said that the Olympics had provided an opportunity to heal unnecessarydivisions among the people through the watching of sport.102

People were not markedly enthusiastic about the Olympics in the years thatpreceded it, which makes it all the more striking that so many tuned in once it wasactually happening. When the success of Tokyo’s bid for the Games was firstannounced in 1959, those most involved may have been jubilant, but there waswidespread criticism in the press, much of it arguing that it was too soon for Japan tostage such an ambitious event, for example because suitable facilities were not available.Some even asserted that Japan should decline the invitation to host the Olympics.

95 Yoshimi, Banpaku genso, p. 83; Bankokuhaku gurafu, iii (Apr. 1970), 24.96 Fujitake, Tokyo Orinpikku, p. 22.97 A. Fujitake, ‘Tokyo Olympics and the Japanese public’, Studies of Broadcasting (March 1967), p. 93, discussed

in J. M. Chun, ‘A Nation of a Hundred Million Idiots’? A Social History of Japanese Television, 1953–73 (New York,2007), p. 224.

98 Brasher, p. 17.99 H. Kato, ‘Japan’, in Television: an International History, ed.A. Smith (Oxford, 1995), p. 295; Kobayashi, p. 651;

Igarashi, pp. 161–2.100 The term is used by Chun, p. 224. Chun identifies the crown prince’s wedding in 1959 and the Anpo

demonstrations of 1960 as other moments of ‘national simultaneity’ produced by the power of television.101 Hando, p. 490.102 Hirabayashi, p. 262.



There were funding problems up to the last minute, and appeals for public donationswere not particularly effective. Surveys of public opinion over the next five yearsconsistently showed opposition or indifference to the Olympics, right into 1964, whenthe mood became much more positive as the Games actually approached. A survey of2,000 adults within the City of Tokyo in February 1962 found that only sixty-eight percent of them knew when the Olympics was to be held. When asked whether theysupported having the Games or not, only thirty-eight per cent ‘agreed on the whole’.By March 1964, seventy-four per cent of people surveyed across the nation thoughtthe Olympics would be a plus for Japan, but a solid number nevertheless continued tothink that rural projects were being sacrificed in favour of the Tokyo-based Games, orthat social infrastructure for ordinary people regardless of where they lived was beingneglected because of expenditure on the Olympics.103 This is hardly a surprisingreaction in view of the government’s Olympic budget of 1.08 trillion yen, or threebillion U.S. dollars,104 at a time when the young British observers insisted that Japanwas still ‘very much a developing economy, very different from our own’.105 Yet, byOctober 1964, interest in the Olympics had increased to the extent that most peoplein Japan watched the key events on television. Evidently, the spectacle had drawn themin. In later years, too, the Olympics remained in the popular consciousness because ofregular showing of the official Olympic film, made by the celebrated director IchikawaKon.106 Tokyo Orinpikku is said to be the most watched film in Japan ever, with anestimated total audience of 18 million by 1994.107 Among other themes, the film maderepeated visual references to the past war and to post-war reconstruction, to themodernity of Japan but also its sense of tradition, and to the internationalizing effectof the Olympics on Japan.

By the time Expo ’70 opened, criticism of the event seems to have been largelyrestricted to left-wing groups and individuals, who opposed it on the grounds of thedispossession of farmers of the land required, effects on the environment, and otherissues. As for Expo and popular culture, no official film achieved the status ofIchikawa’s work; in commercial offerings, there was a science fiction film with variousalternative titles, including Gamera tai maju Jaiga, Gamera vs Giger and Monsters InvadeExpo ’70.108 In this film, much of which was shot on location at the Expo, a giantfire-breathing monster turtle defends the Expo and Japan from attack by anothermonster. Reviews suggest it had no artistic merit, but the film might also indicate alingering sense of Japan’s vulnerability, even though the ‘Japanese’ monster wins in theend.

Media coverage of the Olympics and Expo was itself a major factor in thefavourable reception of the events in Japan, and the attraction of large numbers ofviewers and visitors.The two spectacles are thus excellent illustrations of the extent towhich media and society were intertwined and interdependent in nineteen-sixtiesJapan.The Olympics provided considerable stimulus for the globalization of television,and a dramatic demonstration of the power of television to ‘create a nationalaudience’.109 Notable improvements in broadcasting techniques were developed for

103 Fujitake, pp. 9–10, 16–17, 24–6, 96.104 ‘Tokyo Olympic Games’, in Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan (Tokyo, 1983), viii. 68.105 Connors and others, p. 223.106 Tokyo Orinpikku (1965), directed by Ichikawa Kon.107 Ichikawa Kon and Mori Yuki, Ichikawa Kon no eigatachi (Tokyo, 1994), p. 294.108 Directed by Yuasa Noriaki (1970) (see The Internet Movie Database <http://www.imdb.com/title/

tt0065755> [accessed 5 Feb. 2010]).109 Chun, p. 225.



the Games, including slow-motion playbacks, an uninterrupted mobile telecast of theforty-two-kilometre marathon, and satellite relays to North America.110 Expo ’70received heavy media coverage. Before the official opening in March 1970advertisements appeared in local and national newspapers. Once the exposition hadopened there were regular press briefings and press kits, leading to daily reports andimages on radio and television, in newspapers and magazines. Many special editions ofnewspapers were devoted to the exposition, and editorials supported it. Some reportingwas critical of the overcrowding or the content of exhibits, but even negativecomments drew attention to what was happening. Television, again, was even moreimportant, with regular coverage of the exposition on a number of channels.111

Extensive press coverage of the two events meant on the one hand that the versionsof nationalism and internationalism they promoted received very wide exposure. ManyJapanese thus became familiar with an image of Japan as a unified and peaceful nation,looking to the future while pursuing technological progress and international harmony,and as a very advanced country that was nevertheless also consciously Asian and‘Oriental’. Such powerful images must have played their part in further distancingmemories of the defeated nation of 1945 and the impoverished country seeminglylocked out of international society in the nineteen-fifties. More significantly, afterthe events of 1964 and 1970, transport and communications were more advanced inJapan, regions had come closer to the centre, more people had seen more of Japanat first hand, and people all over the country were increasingly consuming the sameinformation at the same time. ‘Nation’, as a result, was a considerably more forcefulreality than it had been in the past.

Arguably, moreover, by 1970 the nation was more closely identified with the statethan it had been for the previous twenty-five years in Japan. Hostility towards anddistrust of the state had been widespread after the Second World War, and also after thedisruptions of the 1960 crisis over the security treaty with the U.S.A. The tangibleresults of economic growth had already begun the rehabilitation of the central state,which was primarily responsible for growth; the Olympics and Expo ’70 contributedto and strengthened the same process,112 allowing the state to present itself not only asthe instigator of economic growth, but also as the means by which internationalismwas enhanced and national prestige was lifted, as was demonstrated so powerfully in thepublic festivals of 1964 and 1970.The Japanese state could now much more readily beseen as a benign entity devoted to the national interest and to the people’s welfare.

110 K. Suzuki, ‘Global television around the corner’, This is Japan 1966, xiii (Aug. 1965), 171–3.111 Nihon bankoku hakurankai, pp. 100–1;Yoshimi, Banpaku genso, pp. 88–90.112 Hando, p. 490, makes a similar point about the Olympics specifically.



exhibiting a new japan: the tokyo olympics of 1964 and expo '70 in osaka

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