Category Archive: Tokyo 1964

Eddy “The Cannibal” Merckx: The Greatest Cyclist Ever (Wasn’t So Great in Tokyo)

Individual Men's Road Race_Merckx
Eddie Merckx in the blue shirt and Belgium tri-colors (at least I believe it is). From the book, Tokyo Olympiad 1964_Kyodo News Service

Eddy Merckx is called the greatest cyclist of all time. As listed by Sports-Reference.com, he had won or had tied for the most championships in “the Tour de France (5), Giro d’Italia (5), World Championship road race (3), Milano-Sanremo (7), Gent-Wevelgem (3), La Flèche Wallonne (3), and Liège-Bastogne-Liège (5), and in that list, only Merckx’s five Tour de France wins has been surpassed, intially by Lance Armstrong, with seven, prior to his doping disqualifications.”

In 1964, this cyclist from Belgium in 1964 headed into the Tokyo Olympics as a favorite to win the gold as he had won the Amateur World Championships in Sallanches, France. Merckx was called the “Cannibal”, for his ferocious competiveness, and his attacking, devouring style towards the end of a race. And at Sallanches, he showed early evidence of this aggressiveness according to author, William Fortheringham in his book, “Merckx: Half Man Half Bike“.

He fell on the quarter after a few kilometers of chasing. He had barely given himself time to breathe before he attacked again…one by one his erstwhile companions fell back. Accelerating again to the final climb of the road that climbed to Val d’Assy, Merckx forged a lead of a hundred meters in spite of the courage Luciano Armani showed in hanging on to his back wheel. It was enough of a lead to earn him the world title by a clear margin. He was the youngest world amateur champion to that date: nineteen years old.

From there, it was on to Tokyo with dreams of gold.

Individual Men's Road Race
From the book, Tokyo Olympiad 1964_Kyodo News Service

The Men’s Individual Road Race in Tokyo took place in a twisting winding 194 kilometer-race, that was essentially 8 laps of a 25 kilometer course. This course took the 132 cyclists on a tour of Hachioji, a suburban town on the outskirts of Western Tokyo. According to an AP report, “the route took the competitors past the Tama Mausoleum of Emperor Taisho and Empress Teimei eastward on the Koshu Highway and through Hachioji City. The riders then pedaled toward the town of Hino and across the Tama River. They then sprinted on a three-kilometer flat stretch between the towns of Tachikawa and Akishima. From this point on, the road starts climbing on the Tama Mountain range, and winding then through a scenic rural area and returning to the starting point past the town of Tobuki.”

 

Roger Swerts and Eddy Merckx Olympic Village.gif
A quiet evening dinner in the Olympic village in Tokyo with two members of the Belgian AMATEUR cycling team: ROGER SWERTS and EDDY MERCKX.

Despite being a heavy favorite to win gold due to his recent Amateur World’s title, Tokyo was an early blip on Merckx’s legendary career. He finished twelfth in the men’s individual road race. As explained by Fortheringham, his cannabilistic tendency was not so apparent. And the author claims that Merckx was not yet so entitled that the three other members of the Belgian cycling team would naturally support him, and that perhaps a failed attempt to monetarily persuade led to his mediocre results:

Merckz achieved his dream of racing at the Tokyo Olympics later that year, but while the ambition to ride the event had driven him since his early teens, the race itself was anything but a defining occasion. As the amateur world champion, he was no longer just another rider. He was heavily marked by the entire field as he attempted to split the race apart – not the last time he was to find this happening. He suffered from cramp. He rode a less restrained race than in Sallanches, and was chased down by Gimondi when he made his move three kilometers from the finish. Fate had stepped in. the night before, his wallet had been stolen from his room in the Olympic village; in it were the 12,000 Belgian Francs he had brought to pay his teammates. That was the best way to be absolutely certain that they would help him to win. Instead the Belgian team rode for themselves: the gold medal went to an Italian, Mario Zanin, with Godefroot winning the bronze medal and Merckz tweflth. His meteoric amateur career was all but over. Merckx turned professional on 24 April 1965 for the Solo-Superia team led by Rik Van Looy.

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Olympians in the Super Bowl: Very Rarified Air

rings and nflSunday, February 7 is Super Bowl Sunday – half of America will be watching the Carolina Panthers battle the Denver Broncos for supremacy at the 50th iteration of this quintessential American experience, while the other half will enjoy comfortable seating at movie theaters, as well as restaurants not showing the game.

As you are aware, American football, the version with the oval, rugby-like ball, is not an Olympic sport. So unlike basketball, or soccer or tennis or ice hockey, there are not so many Olympians who have played in the NFL, let alone win a Super Bowl.

Irvin Bo Roberson was the silver medalist at the 1960 Rome Games in the long jump, and had a distinguished career as a wide receiver for several NFL teams. In fact, he is the only person to be an Olympic medalist, an NFL player, an Ivy Leaguer and a PhD, but he never went to the Super Bowl.jim thorpe card

The legendary Jim Thorpe, who was essentially brilliant at any sport he played, was the gold medalist for the pentathlon and the decathlon at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics, and was actually the first president of the American Professional Football Association in 1922, so of course, never went to the Super Bowl.

In fact, there are only two people in the world who were Olympians, and who played in a Super Bowl.

Willie James Gault was on the US track and field team as a sprinter in 1980. Unfortunately, that was the year the US boycotted the Moscow Summer Games. Gault would go on to become a star wide receiver for the Chicago Bears and the Los Angeles Raiders, and was on the Bears team that won Super Bowl XX in 1986.

willie gault bears

Bullet Bob Hayes won two gold medals in the 100 meter and 4×100 relay at the 1964 Tokyo Games, and had a hall of fame career as a wide receiver for the Dallas Cowboys. In 1972, he became the first Olympian to win a Super Bowl, contributing with a 16-yard run and two catches for 23 yards in Super Bowl VI against the Miami Dolphons.

Michael D’Andrea Carter took the silver medal in the shot put at the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Games. He was then drafted by the San Francisco 49ers where he played one of the more violent positions on the field, nose tackle, better than anyone else in the game. And he played on a 49ers team that won the Super Bowl three times, in 1985, 1989 and 1990. Carter is only the second person to have won an Olympic medal and a Super Bowl ring ever, let alone in the same year.

michael carter card

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Bridge of Spies: When East and West Germany Were Sliced in Half by a Wall

Rudolf Abel
Soviet spy, Rudolf Abel, actual (left) and as portrayed in the film, Bridge of Spies by Mark Rylance

I recently watched Steven Spielberg’s film, Bridge of Spies. At 2 hours and 20 minutes, Spielberg needed time to tell the complicated story of how an insurance lawyer from New York ended up representing an arrested English Soviet spy living in New York, and subsequently getting in the middle of a two-front prisoner exchange negotiation in Cold War Berlin between uncertain representatives of the Soviet Union and East Germany, whose own alliance seemed strained at best.

And yet the time of the film zipped by. Tom Hanks plied his Everyman shtick to perfection as the lawyer thrust into geo-political intrigue. Mark Rylance was absolutely riveting as the captured Soviet spy, and the famed Coen brothers helped craft a narrative that was clear, and at times, witty.

One particular scene, which apparently had no basis in fact and was done for dramatic effect (effectively), made me wonder. It was a scene where Tom Hanks’ character, James Donovan, is crossing from East to West Berlin over the wall, and witnesses in horror the shooting of a would-be escapee. What must have been the feelings of West and East German athletes at the Summer Games a few years after the wall went up, especially since they had to compete as one German team? Were they happy? Antagonistic? Were they so focused that they simply didn’t notice each other?

East Germany sent no athletes to the Helsinki Games in 1952. But at the 1956 Games in Melbourne, 37 East Germans joined West Germans on a unified German team. This unified German team was identified by the country code GER, was represented by a flag with black, red and yellow stripes, centered by five white Olympic rings, and was presented gold medals using the opening to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9.german olympic flag

When East Germany was expected to send around 140 athletes to the 1960 Summer Games in Rome, East and West decided that it was time for both German teams to live and train together. But 15 years of political rhetoric had created a cultural rift between the two sides. For example, as David Maraniss wrote in his book, Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World, “it was part of the daily rhetoric of East Germany to denounce West German leaders as former Nazis.” The victories of East German diver Ingrid Kramer were an inspiration to all Germans, but the rise of the Berlin Wall and geo-political tensions made a lie of the unified German team. Again, Maraniss writes,

The Berlin border closing during the Olympics had gone largely unnoticed by German athletes in Rome, but months later it took on an unavoidable physical reality when the Berlin Wall went up. Kraemer called the construction of the wall “a huge surprise…It was very cruel for many, especially the finality of it. We were all shocked, as nothing had hinted to its erection before it happened.” The wall, and the cold war tensions that followed, made a sham of Avery Brundage’s insistence that the Germans bring another unified team to the Olympics in 1964. West German sports officials refused to have anything to do with their East German counterparts after the wall went up, and fielded a combined team in Tokyo in name only, barely able to “maintain the façade of being unified,” in the words of historian Heather L. Dicther.

Read a relevant post I wrote previously, Escape from East Berlin in October 1964: A Love Story.

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Olympia Cigarettes: How the 1964 Tokyo Olympics Led to Increased Cases of Lung Cancer in Japan Today

Tokyo 64 Cigarettes
Magazine ad for Tokyo64 Cigarettes.

Ah, the Olympics – an international event that celebrates Man’s desire to achieve new heights, to hone the body and mind to a point close to perfection, for the simple love of competition and achievement.

And yet, what was one of the most successful product promotions related to the Olympics? That’s right. Cigarettes.

The Olympic Games, including the logo and its five interlocking rings, have been one of the powerful brands in the history of marketing. After all, what company or organization would not want to be affiliated with words like world peace, excellence, doing your best, comradery, teamwork, fair play. But it really wasn’t until the 1980s when the International Olympic Committee began taking control of its brand.Olympia cigarettes

Michael Payne is the author of a fascinating book on the marketing of the Olympics, called “Olympic Turnaround“. He wrote how cigarettes, game shows and hygiene products for example were being marketed via the Olympic brand, which created tension in the IOC as it was felt such products did not appropriately represent Olympic values. One of the more remarkable examples Payne cites is from the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.

The tension between the Olympic values and commercial interests is long standing. One of the most successful licensed Olympic products ever produced, for example, was “Olympias”, a brand of cigarette. Produced from a mixture of Turkish and Greek tobacco, it was designed to generate funds to support the organization of the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo. Olympias generated over $1 million in revenues for the Organizing Committee.

Payne went on to provide another example in 1964, a clever promotion using the Olympic brand to further increase the spread of cigarette consumption.

The marriage between cigarettes and the Olympics was a popular promotional theme at the 1964 Games. A popular Japanese cigarette brand, “Peace”, ran a promotion where each package was sold with a numbered premium ticket. This entitled anyone drawing a winning ticket to claim a prize of a further 365 packs. Even back in the 1960s, marketers realized that the Olympic rings could draw consumers’ attention to a product. Every packet of “Peace” cigarettes, carried the Olympic emblem.

Peace Cigarettes

Did these campaigns have an impact? Below is a chart showing smoking prevalence among Japanese men and women. Look at the mid 1960s and you can see leaps in consumption between 1963 and 1965. In fact, it appears that smoking reached its highest rates, almost Olympian heights, around those times. And now the Japanese are paying for it as mortality rates due to lung cancer have peaked in the past 20 years. Fortunately, smoking consumption among women has stayed flat over the decades, and thus so has their risk to lung cancer.

cigarette consumption and lung cancer mortality rates
Age-standardized lung cancer mortality and smoking prevalence, Japan, 1950-2010. Source: World Health Organization

No gold medals here.

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The Gentle Giant Janis Krumins: The Soviet Center on Three Silver-Medal Basketball Teams

Krumins 1
From the October 30, 1964 edition of the magazine, Asahi Graf. The title reads “The Giant Under the Rim: The Soviet Union’s Janis Krumins”

He averaged 8 pts a game during the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. But against the Japanese team, admittedly, not a strong one at the time, this gentle giant poured in a team-high 20 points. So you can imagine the fascination the Japanese had with Janis Krumins. At 218 cm (7ft 2in) and 141 kg (311 lbs), the center on the Soviet basketball team was generally the center of attention wherever he went.

The photos are from the October 30, 1964 edition of the magazine, Asahi Graf (The Asahi Picture News Magazine) in an article entitled “The Giant Under the Rim”.

Krumins 3
The caption for the second picture reads “At 2 meters 18 centimeters and 135 kilos, he makes this fairly tall referee look like a kid.”

At 218 cm tall, even compared to the other basketball players, he’s as they say, a head above the others. And if he jumps a bit, he can extend his hand about three and a half meters above the rim of the basket. He doesn’t really shoot the ball as much as he is placing a lid on a pot.

When he gives up a basket to the opponent, he hangs his head and rubs his nose, his face appearing sad. But he doesn’t really show that much emotion, or raise his voice. And while the other nine players are running all over the court, only one, Krumins, is running slowly. He is the lonely giant.

At the age of 14, Krumins was already 2 meters tall, and thus recruited for a wide variety of sports, including wrestling, boxing and athletics before he found his way on the basketball court. As explained in Wikipedia, Krumins had a reputation for being a soft player. “Seeing a 220 cm giant, most defenders did not hesitate to step on his toes, push or punch him. Krumins patiently took all abuses and when once asked why he didn’t fight back, replied that he was afraid he might accidentally kill someone.“

But with an increase in skills and his overwhelming presence in the paint, the Soviet coaches had to have him on the national team. Krumins competed on three silver-medal winning teams, the Soviet Union failing to break the United States supremacy in basketball in 1956 in Melbourne, 1960 in Rome and 1964 in Tokyo.

Krumins 2
Krumins taking on Mexico under the basket.

 

As Jerry West of the champion American squad in 1960 explained in this video, you knew when Krumins was behind you.

Jan Krumins – he was like 7ft 6. He was a giant! We were playing a very competitive, very physical….dirty. It was dirty. The game got out of hand in our favor and they put in Jan Krumins. The great thing about him – he wasn’t a very efficient runner. You could tell when he was creeping up on you. Bang. Bang. Bang. You could hear him coming up the floor.

Jerry Shipp, who was the leading scorer on the championship American basketball team at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, played against Krumins several times, including in the Soviet Union in the early 1960s. Here’s what he had to say about Krumins.

I never heard him say a word, only grunts the many times I played against him, both in Russia and here in the States. He was not much of a scorer, but he could set very good picks for Gennadi Volnov.  He also spent most of his time back and forth across the center circle rather than making it under his goal when the Russians were on offense and under our goal when he was on defense.

Once while we were riding the train to Stalingrad they gave us sack lunches to eat and I saw Krumins take an apple out of his lunch sack and put the whole thing in his mouth, And that was the last i saw of the apple! 

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Ada Kok: Dutch Butterfly Champion who Swam to Silver in 1964 Against a Wave of American Talent

Ada Kok Sharon Strouder butterfly 1964
From left to right: Ada Kok of the Netherlands, Sharon Stouder and Kathy Ellis of the United States.

 

She used to train with the boys – big boys, who were boxers during the day and bouncers in bars at night. Ada Kok was a teenage swimming phenom, asked to join the Dutch national swimming team at the age of 13, but in the early 1960s in Amsterdam, athletes were on their own.

“In those days, you just had a swimming coach but nothing for any condition training. The coach of the boxing team helped me. I ran in the park with the other boxers. I skipped rope. And my friends made sure that boys didn’t give me trouble when going out in Amsterdam because they’d tell them, ‘I’ll punch you in the nose if you don’t do right by her’.”

Inspired by her sister, who competed on the Dutch swim team at the 1960 Rome Olympics, Kok became the premier butterfly swimmer in the world, setting the world record in that discipline in September, 1963, and again in May, 1964. At the age of 17, Kok was the favorite going into the 1964 Summer Games in Tokyo.

Nearly matching her world record time, Kok swam an excellent race in the 100-meter butterfly finals. But she lost to Sharon Stouder of the USA, who broke Kok’s world record. Going into the finals, Kok expected to win, but in retrospect, she now knows she was unwittingly swimming upstream against a US team that was more prepared and more experienced than any other team.

“I was very disappointed,” Kok told me. “I was the world’s record holder for years, and I was training hard for this event. I didn’t know Sharon Stouder. I didn’t think about my competitors. I was confident, not arrogant. But I was also naïve.”

In the end, no other country had the resources to support a swim team like the USA at the time. Not only was the Netherlands 0.4% the size, 6.3% the population, and 43% of the per capita GDP of the United States in 1964, the US had the swim clubs, the coaches and the access to international competition that very few other athletes in the world had.

Ada Kok on bicycle in Tokyo Olympic Village
Ada Kok (left) on a bicycle in the Olympic Village in 1964.

“They were more professional,” said Kok of the Americans. “They had paid coaches. Mine was a volunteer, who had a regular job. Our swim federation didn’t have the money to send us abroad so we competed in nearby countries traveling at minimum cost.”

And yet, the Dutch women’s team still proved to be a powerful force, winning silver in a team race in the women’s 4X100 meter medley relay, a competition where four swimmers swim two lengths of the pool each in four different styles in this order: the backstroke, the breaststroke, the butterfly stroke, and freestyle (which means any style other than the previous three).

As a demonstration of American dominance, the US swim coach did not even use their top swimmers in the heats. And the four swimmers who swam in the finals set an Olympic record, finishing over three seconds faster than the silver medalists, the Dutch. Making it close was Ada Kok, who got some measure of revenge against Stouder by swimming the third leg butterfly stroke over 1 second faster than the American in the finals. “The silver medal for the team was a positive surprise,” said Kok. “We couldn’t get anywhere near the Americans, but to be second as a team was fantastic.”

Kok would regain her world record in the butterfly in August, 1965, as well as win the gold medal in the 200-meter butterfly in Mexico City in 1968. But she was happy with her results in 1964. “You’re always pleased to get a medal. When you’re on the podium, and you see it and touch it, it’s wonderful.”

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Worrying Willy and Paradise Pete: How the US Army Prepped Recruits for Japan in the 1950s

“One of the great advantages of Army service is the opportunity for travel to far off lands. The American Service Man has a serious job to do overseas. But off duty time often finds him enjoying his stay almost as if he were a tourist.”

The Big Picture_Sgt Queen
Sgt Stuart Queen, screenshot from The Big Picture: The Soldier in Japan

Thus begins the film, “The Big Picture: The Soldier in Japan”, one of a weekly series of television films produced by the US Army about 60 years ago. This film probably served a few purposes: as a training film for soldiers headed to Japan in the late 1950s, as a recruiting film for potential Army soldiers, and as general PR for the US Army.

The film is amazing in its coverage of Japan, commenting on almost everything you could think of: the mystique, the life of the farmer and fisherman, Shintoism, sushi and sukyaki, the coastlines and the mountains, Hakone, Hiroshima, Osaka, rush-hour traffic, tea ceremony, sumo, industry, etc. etc. etc.

There is a bit of subtle ridicule and patronization as you can imagine:

  • Yes, it could almost be the USA, if not for the proof to the contrary that strikes your eye. Those signs may be just a lot of chicken tracks to you, but to the Japanese, they mean a lot.
  • Sushi is boiled rice with a slice of raw fish on it. It tastes just like, well, boiled rice with a slice of raw fish on it.

There is also considerable praise:

  • Roads are the among the “best in our country”. The shoreline is comparable to the Rivera and the coastline in Florida and California coastlines.
  • There is almost no illiteracy in Japan.
  • What strikes you about the Great Buddha (in Kamakura) is the poise, the steady quiet calm of the face, the way the hands are laid in the lap, palms upward, thumbs touching. Poise and calm – you’ll see these qualities in the face and manner of Japanese everywhere.

The film begins with a description of two US Army archetype newbies to Japan, exaggerated but with elements of truth: Worrying Willy and Paradise Pete.

The Big Picture_Shifty Japanese
How Worrying Willy sees the Japanese, screenshot from The Big Picture: The Soldier in Japan

Worrying Willy: He remembers in WWII great stretches of Japan were leveled to rubble by American bombs. Willy still has the idea that Japan is like this (video of bombed out landscapes). Or maybe like this, carry overs from WWII – a hostile country , where down every dark winding alley looms the mysterious menace of the Orient. A straight shooter like Worrying Willy has to keep his wits about him, and his hand on his six-gun partner. Yes that’s Worrying Willy’s impression of Japan, as accurate as thinking that cattle graze on Fifth Avenue in New York City.

Paradise Pete: He has an idea that Japan is an Oriental Paradise where all a fellow does is lounge around in a Never Never Land – all play and no work. Well this version of Japan, to quote a phrase he hears a lot when he gets here, “nebber hoppen”. He’d be better to approach Japan with an open mind, to get rid of phony impressions and start fresh.

The Big Picture_Paradise Pete
How Paradise Pete sees Japan, screenshot from The Big Picture: The Soldier in Japan

During the explanation of Japan’s industrial strength comes the American military’s raison d’etre in Japan: “Japanese industry ranks among the leading industrial powers in the world. Right now, Japan is the only non-communist country in Asia that can build a diesel engine. It is this giant industrial power of Japan that is a prime target of international communism. To see that this prize keeps clear of communist hands is the main reason American fighting men are in japan today.”

Ah yes, the good ol’ Cold War days. True, the film is dated. But one phrase from the film is eternal: “The way Japan affects you will depend a lot on you.”

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Sazae-san Part 5: “Nomunication”

Sazae-san_Eight and a Half Million People

Another great comic strip from Machiko Hasegawa, in the book “The Best of Sazae-san: The Olympic Years“.

Sazae-san’s husband, Masuo, is coming home from work and bumps into a friend. It’s an excuse for Hasegawa to comment on the massive population of the world’s most populous city at the time – Tokyo – which in turn is an excuse for Masuo and his friend to have a drink.

Drinking alcohol in Japan has always been a significant part of Japanese society, the lubricant that eases interactions between people who ordinarily behave formally with each other, the softener that allows the hair to come down, and the relaxant that turns those frowns upside down.

This is especially true in the office life of Tokyo, where most of the populace commute via train and bus and thus have little concern about having a drink or two or three after work. And for the retired generation, those who remember the industrious days of the 1960s and 1970s, drinking together at parties and at company trips to the countryside was the best way to build camaraderie across teams and functions. Drinking with clients after a routine meeting or at the year-end parties were ideal ways to relax the tensions built up between salesmen and customers. It is called “nomunication“, a cross between the word “nomu” which is Japanese for the verb “to drink”, and communication. Here is how Japan Today describes it:

Japanese salespeople frequently woo their clients over drinks, knowing that although explicit deal making is never done during this type of socializing, a deal is rarely won with- out it. Of course, drinking to build trust is not just a Japanese custom. Across East Asia, whether you are working in China, Thailand, or Korea, doing a substantial amount of drinking with customers and collaborators is a common step in the trust-building process.

Many people from task-based cultures don’t get it. “Why would I risk making a fool of myself in front of the very people I need to impress?” they wonder. But that is exactly the point. When you share a round of drinks with a business partner, you show that person you have nothing to hide. And when they “drink until they fall down” with you, they show you that they are willing to let their guard down completely. “Don’t worry about looking stupid,” Hiroki reassured our German manager, who had begun wringing his hands nervously. “The more you are willing to remove social barriers in the evening, the more they will see you as trustworthy.”

drinking in japan_JT

Times are changing. Alcohol consumption among men is dropping, while alcohol consumption among Japanese women is rising. Additionally, Japanese in their 20s and 30s are less likely to go drinking with company colleagues or clients at a drop of the hat as a desire for independence has grown in recent decades. I am an internal consultant in leadership development, and I remember a conversation about a Japanese leader who had strong leadership potential in sales, but was given negative feedback because he didn’t drink alcohol. “How could he shmooze the clients if he didn’t drink with them”, went the argument. Thankfully, executives in that company ignored that particular criteria, enabling that leader to climb the ranks.

Kanpai! I’ll drink to that!

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The Incredible Fencer Ujlaky-Rejto Ildiko: The Deaf Olympic Champion

ujlaky-Rejto IldikoShe is one of the greatest fencers of all time, winning two gold medals at the 1964 Tokyo Summer Games on a strong Hungarian squad, one in individual foil, and another in team foil, four years after winning a team silver medal in Rome. She went on win silver and bronze medals in Mexico City, Munich and Montreal, for a total of seven medals over five Olympic Games.

And Ujlaky-Rejto Ildiko was deaf.

And just as true in Budapest as it is anywhere else in the world, a child with differences – in this case, ear pieces, reading lips and general inability to react to the sounds of the world around her – gets mocked and mired in low self-esteem.

While it is hard to find verbatim comments in English by Ildiko, there is this quote from a deaf fencer named Jennifer Gibson, who explains the challenge. “Being the only one at school who wore hearing aids was not easy and in fact, it was extremely difficult. It was the same with sports, I was the only kid who wore hearing aids on the teams I’ve played on. At the time, in the 70‘s and 80‘s, most teachers and coaches were ill prepared to deal with someone like me. They lacked the proper training and understanding on how to teach to people with a disability, particularly hearing loss. It was essentially a whole new ball game for all of us. From a very young age, I’ve had to be very forward about my hearing loss and inform the teachers or coaches that I couldn’t hear them, particularly in large or noisy environments. Very few of them took the initiative to find alternative means of communicating with me such as using a clipboard or talking to me one on one.”

ildiko at tokyo games
Ildiko, left, competing at the 1964 Olympic Games

Ildiko likely had similar experiences to Gibson, except decades earlier. She picked up fencing at 15. She worked with coaches who instructed her by giving feedback and direction on paper. But there is no getting around the fact that hearing the clash of blades is key feedback to the fencer. Again, here is Gibson explaining the challenge for deaf fencers: “One issue is that some fencing calls rely on hearing the blades come in contact with each other which means I am unable to do that. Bear in mind that it’s also very difficult to see the fencers faces due to the tight metal weave of the mask. When they try to talk to me while wearing the mask, I actually hear very little.”

But as we see from time to time, those with the will to overcome challenges often find a way to slingshot to phenomenal accomplishment.

women's hungarian foil team 1964_Ildiko 2nd left
Ildiko with the Hungarian women’s foil team (2nd from left)
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Sazae-san Part 4: Wishing for those Days of Inflation

Sazae-san_I'm Against Price of Bath Going Up

Japan’s economy is not terrible. Nor is it robust. Generally speaking, the Japanese economy has been pushing hard against the weight of deflation with little result. GDP has dropped, and so have average wages. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, through his mixture of fiscal stimulus, monetary easing and structural reforms, so-called Abenomics, is striving to get momentum rolling the other way, driving inflation and wages up, and getting people consuming and the economy pumping.

In the early 1960s, the economy was booming. And while inflation didn’t appear to be getting out of hand, at least according to the numbers, people like Machiko Hasegawa felt it. She wrote about it in her comic strip, Sazae-san. In the strip above, from the book, The Best of Sazae-san – The Olympic Years“, Hasegawa-san is able to reflect the average citizen’s perception that the price of everything is going up.

And in the strip below about people commuting on a bus, Hasegawa-san is showing that everybody was feeling the pinch.

And yet, it wasn’t by no means a desperate time for Japan. It was indeed a time of optimism and hope. After all, the Olympics were in Japan.

Sazae-san_Not Much Inside

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