Category Archive: Others

Outrage or Guilt: Edward Seidensticker, Yoshinori Sakai and the Appropriateness of Reminding the World of Hiroshima at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics

Edwared Seidensticker

Edward Seidensticker was a translator from Japanese to English, and was so proficient in Japanese that by the time the Tokyo Olympics rolled around in 1964, he had already translated the works of Japanese novelists Niwa Fumio and Tanizaki Junichiro. He would go on to translate one of the world’s earliest novels, “The Tale of Genji” as well as the works of Kawabata Yasunari, which led to his selection as the first Japanese to receive a Nobel Prize.

But his formative years as a young adult was as a translator for the US Marines in the Pacific War, as well as in Post-War Japan during the American occupation. And in the weeks leading up to Tokyo Olympics, Seidensticker reportedly stuck his neck out.

It was already news that the Tokyo Olympic Organizing Committee had selected a 19-year-old freshman from Waseda University named Yoshinori Sakai to run into the National Olympic Stadium, carry the sacred Olympic torch up the steps and then light the Olympic cauldron. Sakai was born on August 6, 1941, in Hiroshima, the day an atom bomb was dropped on that city.

Sakai at cauldron 2

Seidensticker was reported to have objected to this particular selection, saying that choosing Sakai was not “incidental”, and that it was “unpleasant to the Americans”.

When a member of the International Olympic Committee was asked to comment on Seidensticker’s reaction, G. D. Sondhi of India, who had just witnessed Sakai’s torch lighting at the opening ceremonies, replied “He is good and I’m happy to see him do it so nicely. We must bring young people in the Olympics and let those old men just sit and help them.” Sondhi went on to say in an article from the October 11, 1964 Mainichi Daily News that he did not think Sakai’s selection to be political, and rather thought that Sakai was “a big hope” for Japan, and was “the most touching of all Olympic ceremonies I ever saw”.

Take a look at the first 10 minutes of Kon Ichikawa‘s classic documentary, Tokyo Olympiad. Ichikawa shows in dramatic fashion the blazing sun, old buildings being demolished making way for modern-looking stadiums. Ichikawa charts the path of the sacred flame, ignited in Greece, and carried in an amazing international relay through the Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, North Asian and finally into Japan.

After the torch leaves Okinawa, it arrives in Hiroshima. As you can see at about the 6-minute mark of the film, Ichikawa uses a helicopter to focus in on the famed Hiroshima Dome, its skeletal frame a reminder of the atomic bomb’s power, and a symbol for resilience. The Mainichi Daily News wondered if this scene would also arouse the ire of Seidensticker and others like him.

October 1964 was barely 19 years removed from the disastrous end to the war in Japan. Those who remembered the war on both sides could be excused for a nerve unexpectedly exposed on occasion. But I can’t help but believe that the choice of Sakai, born symbolically out of the ashes of Japan’s greatest disaster, was an inspired and most appropriate choice.

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Happy Anniversary! – “The Olympians” is One Years Old

Roy_1965 maybe
Roy, around 1 years old

On May 1, 2015, I kicked off my blog, The Olympians, with the intent of providing at least one blog post every day. Here we are, 365 days, over 10,000 visitors, nearly 20,000 views later, and I have kept my promise. Many thanks to all those who have helped me along the way!

Below are 20 of my favorite posts in 2016:

  1. The 1962 Asian Games: How Cold War Politics Sparked Heated Debate, Leading to the Indonesian Boycott of the 1964 Games
  2. “Do it Again. Again. Again.”: The Uncompromising Mindset of an Olympic Champion
  3. The Dutch Boycott of the 1956 Olympic Games Part 2: Rehabilitation
  4. The Hijab and The Turban: Why American Fencer Ibtihaj Muhammad is Important  
  5. Dr Jega: The Fastest Man in Asia Learns that Life Works in Mysterious Ways
  6. Duke Kahanamoku Part 1: Surfing’s Johnny Appleseed Inspires Australia’s Pioneering Surfers and an Entire Sports Culture
  7. Japanese Face Off in Australia on the 15th Anniversary of Pearl Harbor
  8. Ken Sitzberger and Jeanne Collier: Diving’s Power Couple in 1964
  9. The Pain and Joy of Pain: Dick Roth and the Gold that Almost Wasn’t
  10. The Perfectionist’s Dilemma: The All-or-Nothing Life of Hurdler Ikuko Yoda
  11. Rare Canadian Gold in Tokyo: George Hungerford and Roger Jackson Win the Coxless Pairs
  12. The Record-Setting Row2Rio Team: Following in the Footsteps (Sea legs?) of Christopher Columbus
  13. Remembering the 3.11 Earthquake and Tsunami, My Ancestors, and the Tokyo Olympic Cauldron
  14. Sazae-san Part 3: Suicides and The Pressure Cooker of Japanese Education
  15. Simple is Best: Finally, The New Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Logos
  16. Singaporean Cyclist Hamid Supaat and the Big Chill: Competing on the World Stage
  17. The “Six-Million-Dollar-Man” and “Real Steel” Scenarios: Science and Technology Blurring the Lines and Creating New Ones  
  18. Tommy Kono: Out of an Internment Camp Rises Arguably the Greatest Weightlifter of All Time    
  19. Unbroken: The Truly Epic Story of Louis Zamperini Finally Shown in Japan
  20. Worrying Willy and Paradise Pete: How the US Army Prepped Recruits for Japan in the 1950s

Click here for my favorite posts from 2015! Again, many thanks for all your support!

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Two-time Olympic weightlifting champion Kono dies at 85 | The Japan Times

Tommy KonoPhoto by Y Ishii Jan 19 1957
Tommy Kono Photo by Y Ishii Jan 19 1957

Very sad news. I had the honor of interviewing Mr Kono only 10 weeks ago. Here is the product of that interview: Tommy Kono: Out of an Internment Camp Rises Arguably the Greatest Weightlifter of All Time

 

Two-time Olympic gold medalist Tommy Kono died Sunday in Honolulu due to complications from liver disease, the U.S. Olympic Committee said. He was 85. Kono

Source: Two-time Olympic weightlifting champion Kono dies at 85 | The Japan Times

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A Tale of Two Olympic Sports: Indifferent Golf and Enthusiastic Ice Hockey Facing Opposite Dilemmas

Adam Scott
Adam Scott of Australia

Golf is returning to the Olympic stage in 2016, the first time since the third Olympics in 1904.

And yet, some big names in the game are declining their invitations: 3-time majors winner Vijay Singh of Fiji, World # 7 Adam Scott of Australia, and World #12 Louis Oosthuizen of South Africa.

And it’s possible they won’t be the only ones. While Singh cited fear over contracting the zika virus in Brazil, Scott explained that adding the Olympics to the already congested PGA Tour will make for an exhausting schedule. According to this article, “the PGA Tour has had to cram the World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational, British Open and PGA Championship into a five-week window because of the Olympics. And, two weeks after the Olympics end, the FedEx Cup playoffs begin. Two weeks after those are done, the Ryder Cup will be contested.”

In other words, ensuring they are in top condition for the tournaments that count are key to many of the top pro golfers.

Professional ice hockey players, perhaps many of them, may be having an opposite reaction. Ice hockey has been an Olympic sport since 1920, and countries like the United States, the Soviet Union and former members of that nation, and Canada have had epic battles in the Olympic Games over the decades.

Alex Ovechkin
Alex Ovechkin at the Sochi Olympics

Professional ice hockey players, particularly those from the National Hockey League, were allowed to represent their national teams at the Olympics, starting from the Nagano Winter Games in 1998. But because the NHL and the owners of the team were worried about disruption to the NHL schedule as well as injuries, it was decided that the International Olympic Committee and the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) would foot the bill for transportation and insurance costs. For the Sochi Games in 2014, that was a combined USD$32 million!

The IOC, which provided USD$14 million of that bill for Sochi, just announced that they would not pay those costs to ensure the participation of NHL players at the PyeongChang Winter Games in 2018. Said Rene Fasel, president of the IIHF in this sportsnet article, “Our wish is to have the best players. [But the IOC] not covering the cost as they did at the last five Olympic Games puts us in a difficult financial situation.”

Immediately after this announcement, one of the NHL’s biggest stars, Alex Ovechkin, announced that he would join his Russian National Team for the PyeongChang Olympics regardless of the NHL’s decision. It’s likely that many of his colleagues in the NHL will have similar feelings.

Why the difference in reaction towards the Olympics? I’d have to speculate. But here are a couple of possible reasons:

  1. History: ice hockey and the Olympics have a long and emotional history. The Olympics are considered the pinnacle of achievement for many ice hockey players, even beyond the NHL Stanley Cup championship. Golf has practically no history in the Olympics.
  2. Rigors/Value of the Schedule: The Olympics happen at the time in the NHL schedule where teams are jockeying for playoff spots. But since the NHL controls the schedule, they can suspend the schedule for all teams, which makes it an even playing field for all teams. In the professional golf tour, as has been true with the professional tennis tour, those individuals who participate in the Olympics may lose out on opportunities to play in tournaments that will be more lucrative and perhaps perceived to be more important. When tennis returned to the Olympics in 1984, many of the best players did not compete.
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Prince is Dead – But Prince’s Performance at Super Bowl XLI Will Live Forever

Super Bowl XLI was memorable for its football. It was the first time ever two African American coaches faced off against one another. The game started with a touchdown on its first play, a kick-off return TD. Peyton Manning was named MVP. And the Indianapolis Colts beat the Chicago Bears 29-17.

But today, what many will recall lovingly from that Super Bowl on February 4, 2007, was the electrifying performance by the artist, Prince. As New York Times writer, Kelefa Sanneh, wrote of the 12-minute performance, “His performance last night at Super Bowl XLI will surely go down as one of the most thrilling halftime shows ever; certainly the most unpredictable, and perhaps the best.”

Watch this short documentary produced by the NFL on Prince’s performance and the concerns leading up to it. There had never been a Super Bowl in the rain. Rain is fine for the football players, but it was a worry for the producers of the half-time show. As one said, “We were told ‘It’s never rained in a super bowl in 40 years. Don’t worry about it.’ We were in a booth at the top of the stadium. The rain is pouring into the booth. It was so windy and rainy we couldn’t even see.”Prince performing in the rain at Super Bowl XLI

 

Another person on the production team said this. “I was must panicked. Prince was using four separate live electric guitars. The stage was made of a very slick tile, which when it got wet, was even more slippery. He had two beautiful dancers with him – The Twinz. They were wearing, I think eight-inch heels. And I was thinking, ‘what’s going to happen now?”

But apparently, the unexpected rain storm did not faze Prince. As the production designer of the half-time show recalled in a conversation that was had with Prince before the show, “‘I want you to know it’s raining.’ And Prince said, ‘Yes, it’s raining.’ ‘And are you OK?’ And Prince is like, ‘Can you make it rain harder?’ And I was like, ‘right on!'”

Sanneh thought that “the heavy rain made the smoke and lights seem mysterious, instead of merely ridiculous.” Alan Light, who wrote a biography of Prince called “Let’s Go Crazy” said in the documentary, “It felt spontaneous. He turned the weather to his dramatic advantage. It was almost like a special effect. He could totally lean in to that, and make it seem like, ‘Sure it’s raining. I would have wanted it to rain.’ Like, ‘I ordered that.'”

John Pareles, the Senior Music Critic of the NY Times, marveled at Prince’s song choice and performance in the documentary. “Prince’s set is so wild. He does other people’s songs. He’s not promoting himself. He’s just making music. It’s profound. It’s loud. It’s funky. It’s one performer, shaking the entire world.”

Prince’s final song of the set was his anthem, Purple Rain, one of my favorite songs. As one of the producers of the half-time show said in the NFL documentary, “When he did do Purple Rain, things worked magically, and there’s nothing you can say except ‘thank you’.”

Prince performing in the rain at Super Bowl XLI_2

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Top Seven Places to See and Things to Do in Rio

Headed to Rio for the 2016 Olympic Games? Here’s a post from Cozysweatercafe entitled “The insider’s guide to Rio baby!” The blogger interviews Sulvain Leclerc, a program manager in Sports Relations for the Canadian Olympic Committee. Leclerc had lived in Rio de Janeiro for a few months in 2013. Here are his recommendations for the less-obvious places to go, and things to do in Rio.

  1. Climb all the way to the top of Dos Irmãos for the best point of view of Rio

rio dos irmaos
A view of Rio from Dos Irmãos2.
2. Take the Santa Teresa bonde and explore this hood, its nature, its architecture and its street art

Bonde Santa Tereza
The electric trolley of Santa Teresa

3. Go to Niteroi and go to the Museo Contempora

Niterói Contemporary Art Museum
The Museo Contempora at Niteroi

4. Go to Pedra Bonita for amazing views of Barra da Tijuca

The view of Barra de Tijuca from Pedra Gavea
The view of Barra de Tijuca from Pedra Gavea
5. Go to Urca at Bar Urca and drink beers on the sidewalk and eat a Moqueca in the restaurant

SAMSUNG
Bar Urca
6. Go to a Juice Bar and drink any real juice (Suco)… and try them all: mango, abacaxi, marajuca, etc!

7. Go out in Lapa on a Friday night, this huge sea of people partying outside is spectacular. On the sidewalk, there’s music, food, alcohol. The party is outside and inside in the bars…

the lapa scene
The night scene at Lapa
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Aydin Ibrahimov: 1964 Bronze Medalist and Art Thief

Aydın İbrahimov younger
Aydin Ibrahimov (right)

Aydin Ibrahimov was a powerful bantamweight freestyle wrestler, a strong favorite for gold at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. He was also implicated in a stranger-than-fiction crime, details of which are sketchy at best.

Competing for the Soviet Union, Ibrahimov was hoping to be the second Olympic medalist from the region of Azerbaijan after bantamweight wrestler, Rashid Mammadbeyov, won silver at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics. He defeated wrestlers from Mexico, Canada, Finland and Korea before making it to the medal round, only to fall to Akbas of Turkey, and eventual gold medalist, Yojiro Uetake. He settled for bronze, and presumably a life of glory in his hometown of Kirovabad.

But in the 1990s, Ibrahimov and wife were in the news in what authors, David Wallechinsky and Jaime Loucky, in their bountiful tome, The Complete Book of the Olympics (2012 Edition), called a “bizarre crime”. Let me have them explain it:

In the 1990s, bronze medalist Aydyn Ali Ibragimov was involved in a bizarre crime in which twelve works of art, including rare drawings by Albrecht Durer and Rembrandt, were stolen from the National Fire Arms Museum in Baku, Azerbaijan, and offered for sale to pay for a kidney transplant for a former Japanese wrestler. Ibragimov’s wife was sentenced to a term in federal prison in the United States, but Ibragimov himself disappeared.

According to Today.AZ (An Azerbaijan English news internet site), actually 274 works of art were stolen in July of 1993, after which they were uncovered in the United States thanks to joint operations between national central bureaus of Interpol in Washington,

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The Record-Setting Row2Rio Team: Following in the Footsteps (Sea legs?) of Christopher Columbus

Row2Rio Foursome

Two men and two women are currently rowing their way from Portugal to Brazil. Susannah Cass, Jake Heath, Mel Parker and Luke Richmond have been rowing over six-weeks to shine the spotlight on the upcoming Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, as well as raise funds to fight cancer.

This Row2Rio team is close to becoming the first four-man crew to row from Europe to South America, mainland to mainland. Think about it – four people in the middle of the Atlantic, rowing essentially 24/7, living off of food and water stored inside their 8.6 meter long boat.

While they are the first to make this particular journey across the Atlantic by rowing, the first to actually make this trip was famed explorer, Christopher Columbus. The Italian discoverer, sponsored by Spanish resources, had already found fame and glory in two prior voyages. While Columbus was looking for a westward path to Asia, he famously “discovered” America in his first voyage, naming the locals “Indians” thinking initially that he had made it to India.

It was in Columbus’ third voyage that he sailed from Europe to mainland South America in 1498, the first to do so. Columbus had three ships and a large crew, and it took him about two-and-a-half months to sail from Spain to Paria Peninsula, which is in present-day Venezuela.

The Row2Rio crew is trying to do it in less time, and they are close to completing the 3,600 mile ocean journey. Here is an excerpt from a Row2Rio blog post from Luke Richmond, explaining the travails as they approach their port of call, Refice, Brazil.

Luke Richmond
Luke Richmond

Mother Nature giveth and Mother Nature taketh away. Just as we had a shining light of hope for a fast easier finish to this adventure it all changed within the hour to a grinding slog throughout the night. I’ve adjusted my mindset to just accept whatever the next 8 days will throw at us, the greater the struggle the greater the glory.

The battle line has been drawn. We are currently 600 Nautical Miles from our final destination of Recife in Brazil. If you can imagine a line drawn from our current position to Recife, this is now a line we cannot cross. We must stay south of this line while moving south south west. If we go above it for too long we might not be able to land in Recife and will have to change our final harbour to one of the northern towns. The waves [are]trying to push us north, the wind is trying to push us north west and the current is pulling us west. It’s up to ourselves to fight to stay below our cut off line and get as far south as we can in case we get very bad weather. It’s going to be a fine line all the way to the end. It’s tough rowing but our bodies have been conditioned for it over the past weeks and now this is our final test.

Once they make it to Recife, they complete their journey to Rio by cycling down the Eastern coast of Brazil over 4 weeks, to bookend their journey, which started when the biked from London to Lagos, Portugal. What awaits them are family, friends and the festive atmosphere of Rio on the verge of its biggest party ever.

Christoper Columbus in his Third Voyage
Christopher Columbus upon hitting land in his Third Journey to “Asia”

 

Columbus was not so lucky. After staying at Paria Peninsula for only a week, he set sail

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The “Six-Million-Dollar-Man” and “Real Steel” Scenarios: Science and Technology Blurring the Lines and Creating New Ones

electrically stimulated muscles_Cybathlon
Wheelchair racers whose legs are paralyzed, but whose leg muscles are electro-stimulated to move

 

We cringe when we hear about yet another doping case in sports. Dopers are cheaters! We hope that international bodies like World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) can stay close with the shadow chemists who continue to devise new ways to mask the fingerprints of performance enhancing agents.

We thrill to see a double amputee sprint on carbon-fiber blades, but we worry if they will one day far outpace sprinters who race on legs they were born with. Unfair advantage!

The truth is science and technology, if it had a will of its own, is ever eager to advance, solve problems, and push the inside of the envelope. The infamous Oscar Pistorius was allowed to compete at the 2012 Olympics on his blades, running in the 400 meter and 4X400 meter competitions. Technology in this case did not afford the runner an advantage to take him to the elite levels of sprinting.

But we all know, it’s a matter of time. The “Six-Million Dollar Man” Scenario, where a given person with various prostheses and enhancements will be “better than he was. Better….stronger….faster.” The Six Million Dollar Man debuted on American television in 1973. If the main character, Steve Austin, wanted to participate in the 1976 Olympic Games, he would have won gold in almost every athletic event. Why he wasted time as a secret agent for the OSI is beyond me.

The Six Million Dollar Man

So what does the future hold? Clearly, engineers, scientists and entrepreneurs will continue to look for ways for people with disabilities to return to so-called “normalcy”. They will also look for ways to give “normal” people super-human abilities. In the case of organized sports, the nature of competition will continue to change. In fact, it already has.

When technology creates a totally different standard of performance, new competitions arise, as was explained in this Wired Magazine article from 2012.

When such devices are perfected to the point that they can be used for athletic purposes, we’ll be looking at an entirely new concept of sport. It’s doubtful the Olympics will ever feature exoskelletally assisted runners or weightlifters, but what’s to say that a different type of venue won’t arise for such a thing? “I think that once the technology is proven to exceed normal human function, then the stage will be set for the introduction of a whole new type of enhanced sporting entertainment,” said Matthew Garibaldi, director of the Orthotic and Prosthetic Centers for the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at UC San Francisco.

In fact, two competitions that put technology front and center have emerged. As explained in this Inverse.com article, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich organizes a competition called the Cybathlon, the next one scheduled on October 6. It’s similar to the Paralympics, in which disabled people use technology, like a prosthesis, and the athlete

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