Yumenoshima

Test Event in Archery: “Ready Steady Tokyo” in Yume no Shima

An San of the mighty South Korea team
An San of the mighty South Korea team.

It was a national holiday on a Monday, and despite the drizzle, you might expect a large crowd for this Tokyo2020 event in Yume no Shima, where some of the best archers in the world gathered.

Steve Wijler of the Netherlands 3
Steve Wijler of the Netherlands

It was day 5 of an 8-day event as part of Tokyo 2020’s series of “Ready Set Tokyo”  test events, which will continue until the middle of next year.  But as it was a test event, spectators were not invited. Thus,  the grounds seemed empty, a smattering of competitors, coaches, officials and media meandering in and around the area of competition.

No Spectators
No Spectators invited

In July, 2020, the spectator stands will have been constructed and these grounds will be packed with people. But during this tournament, the primary purpose is for world-class athletes to test the newly opened facilities in a competition format.

Mariana Avitia of Mexico with coach
Mariana Avitia of Mexico with coach

The site on Yume no Shima is one of only 8 permanent facilities built for the Tokyo 2020 Games. (Twenty five of the 43 venues required are existing sites, while another ten are not permanent, to be dismantled after the Games.) The main area for the archery competition is made up of two long lanes where two competitors face off, aiming for the yellow bulls-eye 70 meters away.

Judging the Results
Judging the Results

Archers marched in with a guide holding their national flag. The judge greeted the competitors. The arrows were launched and brought back to the archers by a person on a motorized scooter. And strangely enough, the music in between competitive moments was hugely dominated by tunes from Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel. “The River” seemed strangely appropriate.

Denchai Thepna of Thailand
Denchai Thepna of Thailand

With a year to go before the Games, the landscape is still raw. Sponsor signs, which you will not see during the Olympics, were boldly displayed. And the lack of people created a somewhat somber, lonely atmosphere. But it is another step in the incredibly complex logistical nightmare that is the Olympic Games, and as far as one could tell, all seemed to be proceeding without incident.

The Arrow Bearer
Staff shuttled the arrows back and forth between the targets and the shooting stage.

“Next year the Olympic Games are here in the same venue and now it feels like we’re starting the Olympic process,” said Chang Hye Jin of the dominant South Korea team, double gold medalist at the 2016 Rio Olympics. “I expected the weather conditions here in Tokyo to be very hot and with strong wind. But there’s no wind and the temperature is low, so that is good. Before the Olympic Games, this tournament gives me a chance to get experience in this field. I can learn the wind direction and get used to the environment.”

Below is what an arrow traveling 240 kph looks like when shot.

All photos/video taken by the author.

Continue reading →

The Best of the Olympians 2018: Tokyo 2020

Tokyo wins 2020 bid
Tokyo wins 2020 bid

573 days to Opening Day of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. On July 24, 2020, all the questions, all the angst, all the planning will end, and all that will matter are the athletes. For now, we can only speculate about what will be, and recall what has been.

 

Continue reading →

Olympic Ransom and the Terror Attack of the ’64 Olympics that Never Was Part 2: Yumenoshima – from Garbage Dump to Tokyo2020 Archery Venue

 

Shimazaki on Yumenoshima
Shimazaki hiding from the police on Dream Island, in the Asahi Television produced film, Olympic Ransom

The phone rings. It’s Kunio Shimazaki, and he’s asking for police inspector Masao Ochiai, to inform him where to deliver the ransom money. If the police do not comply with his demand for 80 million yen, then he will set off another bomb in Tokyo, one that will certainly derail the good-feel bandwagon of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. (See part 1.)

Shimazaki hangs up, but the police notice in the recording of the call that seagulls could be heard in the background. The Tokyo University student, Shinozaki, as created by Hideo Okuda, in his 1984 novel “Olympic Ransom” (Orinpikku no Minoshirokin), is keeping out of sight.

IMG_0686
Yumenoshima today. The area behind the white fence will be the archery venue for Tokyo 2020. You can see the chimney for the incinerator that get rids of waste and provides heat for the greenhouse.

The police, of the possible hundreds of seaside spots along Tokyo Bay, wonder where Shinozaki, and his partner in crime, Tomekichi Murata, could be.

As it turns out, they are hiding on Dream Island, a landfill in Tokyo Bay off of the mouth of the Arakawa River. First planned in the 1930s as the possible site to replace Haneda Airport, it was opened to the public as a beach called Yumenoshima, the island of dreams. Alas, dreams don’t last forever. The beach was closed, re-opening as a garbage dump in 1957, an out-of-the way destination for the increasing amount of waste generated by a fast-growing economy.

IMG_0689
The map of Yumenoshima, the white box in the middle is where the archery venue will be.

Unfortunately, the ten million tons of garbage accumulated over a ten-year period, was left to fester. And only 8 months after the end of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, it was reported that massive number of flies, that literally blackened the sky, made their way from Yumenoshima across the Sumida River into the heart of Tokyo. As famed translator, Edward Seidensticker wrote in his book, Tokyo Rising, the Japan Self-Defense forces were brought into the fight off the plague of flies.

Initial efforts of the Self-Defense Force (the Japanese army by another name) to exterminate the flies seem initially to have had only the effect of spreading them. Finally a scorched-earth policy worked. Dream Island was for a time a cinder on which not even flies could live.

Today, Yumenoshima is a nice weekend outing, where you can hold a barbecue, sail away from the Marina, walk through a tropical greenhouse, visit the museum of the famed Daigo Fukuryu Maru, a symbol of the horrors of the nuclear age in the 1950s, or play baseball by the seaside on one of 12 fields.

Tokyo 2020 archery field yumenoshima
An illustration of the planned archery venue for Tokyo 2020.

It will also be the site for the archery competition during the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. A grassy field across the street from the greenhouse, the area is fenced off as construction continues.

From an idea to a dream to a nightmare, Yumenoshima has settled into middle age as a family outing. And in 2020, the world of archery will descend on the man-made island, dreaming of gold.

IMG_0700
If you look closely, you can see Tokyo Skytree in the distance.
Continue reading →