Phoenix arisen: Japan as peaceful internationalist at the 1964 Tokyo Summer Olympics

Abstract

The dominant discursive narrative at the 1964 Tokyo Summer Olympics was that of Japan as a peaceful internationalist. No longer was it the aggressor and enemy of World War II. The post-war Constitution was the basis for this claim of a new Japan. The deployment of Japanese experiences as the only victims of atomic weapons buttressed Japan's moral claim to a new, ‘peaceful’ identity on the international stage, while providing rich material for domestic narratives of victimhood and suffering. It was a careful and nuanced balancing act – premised on inventing a forward looking Japan that was new and different from its martial past, while at the same time selectively remembering the past, both overtly and subconsciously, to erase problematic portions of it. This new peaceful identity for Japan, and the Olympics as the perfect stage for performing it, filled the discourse from the earliest stages of application to the Games themselves.