Japan Through the Lens of the Tokyo Olympics Open Access

This book situates the 2020 Tokyo Olympics within the social, economic, and political challenges facing contemporary Japan.

Using the 2020 Tokyo Olympics as a lens into the city and the country as a whole, the stellar line up of contributors offer hidden insights and new perspectives on the Games. These include city planning, cultural politics, financial issues, language use, security, education, volunteerism, and construction work. The chapters then go on to explore the many stakeholders, institutions, citizens, interest groups, and protest groups involved, and feature the struggle over Tokyo’s extreme summer heat, food standards, the implementation of diversity around disabilities, sexual minorities, and technological innovations. Giving short glimpses into the new Olympic sports, this book also analyses the role of these sports in Japanese society.

Japan Through the Lens of the Tokyo Olympics will be of huge interest to anyone attending the Olympic Games in Tokyo 2020. It will also be useful to students and scholars of the Olympics and the sociology of sport, as well as Japanese culture and society.

Barbara Holthus, Ph.D., is a sociologist and deputy director of the German Institute for Japanese Studies, Tokyo, Japan. Her main research interests include marriage and the family, childcare, happiness and well-being, media, as well as demographic change. Publications include Life Course, Happiness and Well-being in Japan (2017, Routledge, ed. with W. Manzenreiter).

Isaac Gagné, Ph.D., a cultural anthropologist, is a senior research fellow at the German Institute for Japanese Studies, Tokyo, Japan and managing editor of Contemporary Japan. He is a cultural anthropologist working on mental health and social welfare, morality and ethics, and religion. Publications include "Religious globalization and reflexive secularization in a Japanese new religion" (2017, Japan Review).

Wolfram Manzenreiter is professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Vienna, Austria. His research is concerned with social and anthropological aspects of sports, emotions, rural Japan, and transnational networks of the Japanese diaspora. Publications include Sport and Body Politics in Japan (2014, Routledge).

Franz Waldenberger is an economist and director of the German Institute for Japanese Studies, Tokyo, Japan. His research focuses on the Japanese Economy in comparative perspective. Recent publications include "Society 5.0. Japanese Ambitions and Initiatives" in The Digital Future (2018, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung).